aragno

Greetings! I have had some great help from everyone on here for planning our trip to Japan but I cannot find a decent hotel for wife, 9 month old baby, and myself for a few nights. Can anyone recommend something that is less than 250 USD per night? Would be great to find a place that can provide a baby crib and a room large enough to contain said baby crib and ourselves

A double bed or larger for the 2 of us would be good too... but I could be asking for too much. I had no idea it was so expensive to find a hotel in Kyoto.

Thanks!

ksandness

Large rooms usually come with a high price tag in Japan. That's just the way it is. If you're willing to put up with a small room, i.e. you'll have trouble walking once you set up the crib, you can bring the price way down.

One thing you may not know about Japan is that you don't have to sacrifice cleanliness and safety in low-priced hotels unless we're talking about backpackers' hostels.

I did a search on Trip Advisor, and I found some budget options. For example:

http://www.superhoteljapan.com/en/s-...ra.html#charge

http://www.japanican.com/hotels/shis...1A11&ref=dormy

The Citadines in Kyoto, which is more of an apartment hotel, may be more suitable if you really need room. I did a dummy booking for two adults and one child and found rates averaging about US$175.

http://www.citadines.com/japan/kyoto...tyCityID=Kyoto

So keep looking beyond the hotels that you would normally think of booking at, and you're bound to find something.

(When looking at prices on TripAdvisor, clicking on "Show the lowest price" will bring up every booking site on the Internet. Instead, go to the actual website of the hotel to see if it appeals to you.)

abmj-jr

As I recall, you are visiting Kyoto in late March. If that is correct, you are running into the "high" season and related higher room rates and full hotels due to the start of the cherry blossom season and a couple of large festivals. I actually will be there a week later and had to settle for a room in Nara instead of Kyoto in order to get my preferred hotel chain. Not a big problem as I'll have a rail pass and the rapid service train to Kyoto takes only about an hour. If you can't find something suitable, you may need to widen your search to Osaka or Nara.

In addition to the suggestions above, you might have some luck finding something on Japan Hotel Network or Rakuten Travel.
http://www.japanhotel.net/pref.aspx?pref=KANSKYOT
http://travel.rakuten.com/hotel/asia...kyoto/shi.html

ksandness

Yes, March is school vacation month in addition to being the start of the blossom season. (The school year usually ends mid-March and starts up again around the second week in April--for some reason, Japanese schools operate on something more like a Southern Hemisphere calendar.)

Fortunately, Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto are quite close together, and in a pinch, you should be able to find a room in one of the other cities. Osaka is a huge, sprawling urban center with a lot of other things to do besides host tourists, and Nara, although quite a tourist mecca, is usually visited on a day trip from Kyoto, so tourists don't often think of staying there. Of the two, Osaka is about an hour away by commuter train or 20 minutes by Shinkansen (but use the latter option only if you have a JR Pass). Nara is about 30 minutes away by either JR or private rail.

dls25

I booked a twin at the Citadines in Kyoto for $98/night on www.hotelclub.com/visa. I did notice that the hotel rates were generally quite high in Kyoto so I booked that as soon as I saw it.