APA Hotel Kanda-Eki-Higashi

5 minute walk from Kanda Station. It is in an easily understood location. The room is the same size as a standard business hotel. There are amenities and free mineral water. It might have been a coincidence, but despite its single use, it had a semi-double bed, with pillows that fit my body, and my neck didn't hurt the next day, which was unusual for a hotel stay. The reception was attentive and the rooms were well cleaned and comfortable. However, even though it is a 12 story hotel, there is only one elevator and it is necessary to allow extra time for Check-out. Also, if you choose contactless check-in, you will be asked to register with a dedicated app, which is a bit annoying.

It was my second experience with a hotel from the APA network. This one was newer and smaller than that I stayed before and had all the features that APA provides: friendly English speaking staff, smooth check-in and check-out procedures, full set of necessary accessories, etc. The location was rather well, it took for me no more than 10 minutes accessing JR Kanda station and a couple of metro stations around as well. My single room was a bit more spacious than I expected though its layout was not very comfortable to my taste. The table was pretty big and, to my pleasure, wasn't blocked up with TV-set which was was placed on the other table near the door. The bathroom seemed somewhat smaller than usual for a 3* hotel but maybe it was just me. The real problem was that the water tap was kind of broken and water head was either none or maximum. Pretty inconvenient. The most annoying thing that I experienced was the noise. The window faced the street and soundproofing was absolutely incapable of blocking the noise coming from the highway outside. It was not a big deal during daytime but in the morning it was barely tolerable. The room cleaning staff tried hard to not making noise before 11 am and it was really great. On the other hand, they failed to dump the trash from the garbage cans in my room once and left no complementary coffee and water the other time. It was a forgivable oblivion in my case but some other could feel offended. :-) If not the noise, I could recommend this hotel for everyone who doesn't want to spend much money on hotel room.

We stayed for 3 nights. On the upside, the hotel was close to the Kanda JR train station so it was quite convenient. Between the hotel and the station, there is a good group of places to eat off the main road (SE of the station). Also, the front desk staff was very kind and helpful despite having pretty weak English. We used Google translate to communicate some of the more complex sentences and that worked well. However, those don't make up for the poor experience we had overall. - Our bed had a noticeable dip in the middle (room # 702), causing my wife and me to slide towards each other. The pillows were no more than an inch thick and provided not enough support. We tried to go with it for the first night but neither of us slept well. - The showers are designed in such a way that any water that hits the back wall or resting surface behind the tub washes onto the floor. It is too easy to get the bathroom wet while showering. We tried to adapt by either squatting down into the tub or holding the shower head the whole time while washing, which was manageable but annoying. If I had to guess, I'd say that the design had not been tested in that room before they decided to go with it. - Our thermostat was broken so we were unable to adjust the room temperature. We tried to live with it, but when it got too hot for too long, we asked to change rooms and did so. - Thankfully, the thermostat in our new room worked. Except on the third night when the hotel changed the setting so that all rooms were set to heat rooms to the same temperature, centrally managed. It became too hot for us and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't decrease the temp. I was afraid the thermostat was broken again. But I called and learned what was happening and they said that they could not turn it off just for us (or adjust it), so we opened the window to cool the room down to get to sleep. - The shower in the second room (# 1105), every 30 seconds or so, would briefly switch from the current temperature to cold water for a second, then hot water for a second, then back to the current temperature. We decided to just live with it but could imagine this would be a bigger problem for some people. Throughout it all, the staff was great. We wanted to like the hotel but had a frustrating stay from the issues above. Only recommend staying here if there are no other options available.