Japanese Hotels

I spent 2 weeks in Japan in March. I had a rail pass and travelled between Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Huis Ten Bosch (near Nagasaki).

It had been 3 years since I’d been to Japan – the longest I’d been away since I lived there. I visited friends along with trying out some new places that had opened recently.

In Tokyo I stayed for a night at a bookshop hotel where you could sleep on the bookshelves (a bit like staying at a capsule hotel).

I also spent a night at the Hotel Gracery in Shinjuku, which has a giant Godzilla head on the 8th floor. They also have a Godzilla room, which I booked a couple of months in advance.

The room even had a Godzilla button and when you pressed it, the bed began to shake and the Godzilla statue in the room started roaring.

I also stayed at the Henn-na Hotel, also known as the Robot Hotel. You have the option of being checked-in by Yumeko, the android or by a dinosaur.

The dinosaurs can get quite upset if you don’t have a reservation.

There is a little robot doll in the rooms that can understand basic commands in English or Japanese and can the lights on and off and give you weather forecasts.

There is also a robot cloakroom to store your luggage.

The robot hotel is next to Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch-themed theme park.

Wandering past windmills in Japan while speaker blare out Hotel California and nearby there is a Venetian masquerade dance party going on in Amsterdam Square can cause a weird sense of dislocation.