I am planning a trip to Tokyo in early March and am interested in finding hotel recommendations for Tokyo or Kyoto that include the following qualities:

- clean, safe area
- no/few frills, relatively inexpensive (I could get some free nights at the Marriott but would prefer something more Japanese -- the catch is that I speak very little Japanese, so there's a bit of a tradeoff there...)

I saw some recommendations in an earlier thread on the Asia Center of Japan -- any others along that ilk? Could we go (there will be two of us) somewhere "where the Japanese go" without speaking much Japanese?

Thanks in advance!
-nhy