Kanazawa Central Hotel East Building — Hotel in Kanazawa

Stayed here with a friend and we practically lost our minds and our temper's trying to find the hotel.||We had a map printout of everywhere we stayed from the nearest train station and this was the only one to fail us. Why? Because the hotel is tucked down a tiny alleyway with practically NO signage to tell you what the building was. It's only a 7 minute walk from the JR station but it took us twenty minutes in the rain with our suitcases wandering back and forth around the block to find it. When we got there we knew it was before check in time but we asked if we could leave our bags there anyway before heading out sightseeing. They said it was fine but instead of putting it in the luggage room they just shoved it to the side where anyone could take it if they wanted (lucky people are a bit more honest in Japan).||Other than this we didn't have any dealings with the staff much and just used it as a base for sightseeing. Room was basic and clean. There's a department store near the station that has restaurants on the 6th and 7th floors so you've got plenty of cheap dining options. ||Wish we'd spent more time in Kanazawa as it's a beautiful old city and well worth the bullet train trip. You can get a 5 yen bus pass around the city which is a definite must! You can see the old Geisha houses and samuri houses. We also got a train to Nagano to see the snow monkeys which I recommend to anyone who isn't afraid of a decent walk.||I'm choosing a different hotel next time but if cheap and economic is what you're going for then knock yourself out...

Kanazawa is fast becoming one of the most popular tourist destinations of Japan, especially for those who're looking for something off the beaten path. Thanks to this popularity (in part thanks to newly started Shinkansen service), it's becoming difficult to find a hotel room in a convenient location.||We were looking for a hotel close to Kanazawa station, and found Kanazawa Central as one of the cheaper options. We stayed for two nights, and found it to be OK. The hotel is just about 5 minutes walking distance from JR Kanazawa Station, and room rates are reasonable. ||The hotel is old, and its entrance or the front desk looked a little bit gloomy; the staff were polite, but they didn't exactly come up to the high service standards usually expected at hotels in Japan.||The lobby had quite a few tourist pamphlets and magazines, but mostly in Japanese, except for Eye on Kanazawa- a free magazine in English.||Room facilities were basic and bathroom/toilet was small. Hotel has a public bath.||Hotel has a breakfast, but we decided to skip it, as there were a number of good cafes/restaurants around the hotel. You can also buy drinks from the vending machines.||If you're in Kanazawa for a short business trip or a busy sight seeing trip, and you just want a place to sleep...or with quick access to JR Kanazawa, you can try out Kanazawa...

Excellent location 5 minute walk from the central train station||The hotel staff spoke limited English. This would not have been an issue normally, but we had booked a non-smoking room and when we arrived in our room to find it smelling of smoke and with an ashtray on the desk it was hard to communicate that we wanted to move to an alternate room. They did agree to move us, but the new room was on the same floor. As the entire floor smelt of smoke, this didn't really resolve the issue. However, I'm not sure that there were any non-smoking floors in the entire hotel, so if having a room that smells of cigarette smoke is an issue for you I would avoid booking a room here. The air conditioning also took a very long time to cool down the room. We checked in at about 8pm and it took until midnight for the main part of the room to begin to feel cool. We were in Kanazawa during an extremely busy period (there appeared to be some kind of conference taking place whilst we were there) which led to limited availability of hotels and inflated prices. If we had stayed at this hotel for the normal price, we would probably have found it reasonable in terms of value for money. As we actually paid a lot more, we were not overly impressed by the standard of the...