Thanks for all the assistance. As it turns out, kats, I had found the Dormy Inn web site, in both English and Japanese, but it apparently wasn't working for at least part of yesterday, such that the pages just loaded as blanks (and I even tried with another browser). Today all is working just fine, but thanks heaps for going to the trouble of linking all the images.

Thanks as well to Applefan for your first hand experience at Dormy Akihabara---exactly what I was looking for (even if you can't vouch for the female baths---here's hoping that we get something as nice). The Dormy properties do show up in Rakuten, with somewhat random availability at other hotel booking sites. I've not used Rakuten before, and the cancellation policy is a bit vague, with penalties ranging from 20% to 100% as the reservation time approaches. What's not specifically spelled out is the policy for a cancellation well in advance of the reservation, say a week or so---is there still a 20% penalty? Or no penalty whatsoever?

The Dormy web site also makes it (more or less) clear that you can simply contact the individual properties by phone, fax, or email, and I think that I might just do that in hopes that I could go ahead and book soon for January 2010 rather than wait until rooms are loaded into Rakuten (only a month or so in advance it seems, based on some dummy bookings).

I'm probably going to go with Dormy Shinsaibashi in Osaka and Dormy Akihabara in Tokyo. In Kanazawa I've got my pick among the Dormy property (adjacent to the train station) as well as APA properties adjacent to the station (http://www.apahotel.com/~language/en...mae/index.html) and farther into town (http://www.apahotel.com/hotel/hokuri...ish/index.html). Again, any firsthand experience very welcome.