Aventine

More like barely glazed. This is somewhere most urban low slung luxury hotels need to improve on.

MikeFromTokyo

For me the soundproofing is adequate. I have never had noise disturbance at this hotel.

Kagehitokiri

hoshinoya - 6 rooms + lounge per floor, curious re room allocation
great report! how did it work with shoes at entrance and exit ?
for other hoshinoya, a non-ryokan person here said great beds

odd i recall posts re FS saying watching trains and cant hear them

japanesegeek

Not positive on room allocation (I do know there are three room types). But basically the elevator exits to a short hallway and then the lounge and then another hallway where the rooms are off.

Shoes at exit was easy, there was always someone who would quickly fetch them for me without prompting. Dealing with the shoes at the entrance required a bit more patience, I'm sure there is some social signal I was doing wrong even though I tried imitating what I saw the Japanese hotel guests doing (not blaming the attendants, not only am I not from Japan but I also have autism so messing up social signals is par for the course for me), but the staff was invariably much slower to collect my shoes on entrance (and as mentioned they were very quick to help upon exiting). Slightly uncomfortable in the moment, but not something that diminished the great stay.

MikeFromTokyo

That is basically my experience. Although if listening carefully one can perhaps hear faint noise, but it's within normal limits for me. And there is no high speed train movement at night, only perhaps a bit of relatively silent maintenance activity or train positioning going on.

It's my favorite urban boutique hotel I have ever experienced.

NickW

I recall from my stay back in 2005 that the windows at the FS Marunouchi are triple-glazed, in fact.

RichardInSF

I'm no super-expert on this but I would think at an upscale or better Japanese hotel/ryokan which requires shoes off at the entrance, you take them off, leave them at the removal area, and just walk in without waiting for someone to help you. It is the hotel's responsibility to take care of it from there.

Aventine

I don't know but I had a room overlooking the main street and noise came through. An ambulance in the night one time.

bhrubin

Call me crazy, but it seems fairly likely that some windows at the FS are not quite as insulated from noise as others...and/or that some guests are more sensitive to noise than others.

United747

Haha, I'm thinking the same. I live next to a hospital and parking garage, so nothing really bothers me! Maybe someone should bring a decibel-o-meter on their next trip!

I'm happy to be the test subject, thinking of going in late August/early September.

MikeFromTokyo

And, what would you expect from a low floor hotel in a room facing the street? An ambulance siren is obviously going to be audible even through otherwise very good double/triple glazed windows.

Aventine

To be honest, I expected a little better from FS back then.

MikeFromTokyo

I see. For me, they are by far the most consistently excellent hotel group. Peninsula is exceptional, but too small of a group to evenly compare, and incidentally I do not like their Tokyo property.

MO and Ritz-Carlton have much more variation (although both excellent in Tokyo), whereas I can count the FS properties I would call sub par on one hand. And even at those properties with sub par hard products, FS management and service culture usually comes through and saves the day.

Aventine

I think the FSM GM is a class act but I've had too many unpleasant experiences with them recently. Luckily, Tokyo is spoilt for choice...

nnn

We were at the FS a couple of weeks ago. Had a room facing the trains (really cool, IMO), and we had no issues with noise. I don't remember hearing them at all.

Also, we had two kids, 9 and 5, and they were treated like royalty by the staff. Lots of welcome goodies, etc.

Great hotel, IMO. The platform arrival/departure service is also very cool.