We stayed at the hotel a couple of months ago for 8 nights as tourists with our 8-year-old daughter. She slept on an air mattress. The room is indeed a bit tiny, especially with the strange “thing” they've built up in front of the window. I don't know if this was necessary for some technical elements like heating or cooling or if it is just a very strange design. The hotel room is fine for two people. For three people it was very tight, but managable.

We had a lot of baggage because we'd been traveling for a long time. So when we arrived, we took what we needed for the week and only left one suitcase in the room. For the other two bags we asked the hotel reception to store them.

The breakfast was very high quality. You get to choose one small dish from the menu, and the rest you take from a small buffet. I liked that it was quiet compared to the stampede in the Novotel Nara.

We had platinum status when we stayed at the hotel. At the time we booked the hotel, we only had gold status. So the young man at the reception wanted to give us only the gold benefits. Even though this was a slight problem, he was very friendly. He was told by his colleague that the current status is important, not the status you had at the time of booking and that cleared things up for him. Nobody hat told him before. The status was important for us because we booked the hotel because of the lounge.

I really enjoyed the lounge. I need to work a couple of hours from time to time, and the lounge is empty during the day, making it very good for working on the laptop. In the evening, we often dropped by the lounge for a drink and some of the very good French-inspired food. Then, we went back to the city again. At the time we were there, the lounge was only filled (1/3 or half) in the evening, so it was a very nice and friendly atmosphere. Our daughter was allowed in the lounge during the evening. I also enjoyed that you can see the trains from the big lounge windows.

What I liked about the hotel the most:

• The lounge
• The cheese selection from the breakfast (after several month in Asia it was good to eat real blue cheese/Gorgonzola again)
• The location that enables you to have a short stop in the hotel and then go back right into the city without losing too much time
• The design concept
• Comfortable mattresses

We also stayed in the Novotel Nara, the Mercure Kyoto station and the Mercure Tokyo Haneda Airport - if you have any questions how the hotels compare, feel free to ask.