I honestly can't think of a single category...rooms, service, food, value, etc...where I could rate the Prince Hotel chain above all others. I'd hesitate to recommend it to anybody making their first stay in Japan. But still, the places do have some intangible quality to them that I find to enjoy more than even the finest luxuries of the Peninsula or MO.

Is it the result of the power of Yasujiro Tsutsumi to secure (by hook or by crook) the most primo locations that Japan has to offer? Or the ridiculous amounts of money spent on these places with borrowed money, that ultimately proved to be the parent company's undoing? (I really miss the Yokohama Prince...the Sakura-lined road up the hill, the indoor Botanical Gardens, the overpriced buffet overlooking the industrial complex...all that remains now is the Kihinkan.) Whatever it is, the feeling I get when staying at or visiting these places is unlike any I can get anywhere else.

The best way that I can think of to express it is that, for me, the Prince Hotels seem to embody the romanticized ideal of the Showa era. Even new places like the Prince Park Tower feel like a living monument to one of the greatest rises to bubbles of all time, when hope for the future was abundant and everything seemed within the realm of possibility.

Is it just me?