Whenever Sendmail’s Professional Services folks come over to Tokyo for extended periods, they stay at one of the Tokyu Stay hotels, usually the one in Yotsuya.
On this trip, when I first arrived, our team had booked me in to a place closer to our office in Ginza. My friend Sandy came over to meet me for dinner and started laughing at the room. He had assumed that since I was staying in a “business hotel” it would be much nicer than his room over at the Stay (or as we call it, “Sendmail Office, Yotsuya”). After seeing his place, I immediately moved.
The Tokyu Stay is fantastic! It’s designed as an extended-stay kind of place, with very clean and well laid out rooms which are more like mini-apartments. There is a micro kitchen and a combined washer/dryer (yes, combined!). They skip some of the usual overheads of regular hotels: housecleaning only comes once a week, there’s no room service, etc. But the building and rooms are really very nice, there are some nice open spaces for lounging around, and it’s cheaper than any hotel I’ve stayed at in Tokyo! Whether you’re coming to Tokyo for work or fun, I highly highly recommend this place (can’t vouch for the other properties in the chain…yet…)
Oh yeah, and be sure to request a non-smoking room!
