Gion Misen Furumonzen — Hotel in Kyoto

I am sharing this review only to ensure that others can make an informed decision about where to stay to ensure that their travels are comfortable.

It should be noted up front that the staff at this hotel are extremely helpful, and despite the issues I'll describe below, did their very best to assist in the moment and were accommodating in meeting our request to move to another hotel, which we're very appreciative of.

This hotel is in a great location, the staff are friendly, and it's aesthetically very nice.

However, if you have any issues with sleeping in bright light, on a near solid surface, with a less than 1cm thick pillow, unfortunately, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

Directly across the street is a Lawsons store with an extremely bright sign. Even with the "blinds" (thin metal slats with cracks) in the room fully closed behind the traditional shades, it was pretty much daylight at all hours in our room as it faced this side of the street.

I genuinely enjoy a firm bed, however, I have never in my life encountered a bed this firm. Both me and my partner were in so much pain after attempting (unsuccessfully) to sleep on it. I weigh about 80kg, and truly if me laying on the bed made it compress more than 1cm, I'd be surprised.

The pillows are just incomprehensibly bad. I am at a complete loss as to how they ended up being used in a hotel, as I cannot for the life of me understand why any company would manufacture such pillows in the first place, let alone why someone would make the decision to select them for guest comfort in a hotel. The weight of my hand, without any additional pressure, would compress them down to a width of under 1cm. Without exaggeration, a folded up hand towel provides more support.

We stayed for one night and shared our feedback. The staff attempted to alleviate the concerns, but we decided that the comfort level just wasn't there and would instead move elsewhere.

While we didn't raise this one to the staff, it's also worth noting that even in October, the rooms were pretty humid, and the Air Conditioner didn't do a great job of alleviating that.

These issues have been mentioned in other reviews for many years, and I chose to ignore them because I didn't believe that a hotel would allow such simple things to continue to be an issue, or that people were just being overly sensitive. However, the hotel has allowed them to remain an issue, and people are not being sensitive. While again, the staff were incredibly helpful, I cannot fathom how a hotel would not simply order some basic black out roller blinds to put behind the traditional window shades, invest in some decent pillows, and preemptively provide the option of some kind of foam topper for the bedding. Though preferences can certainly vary, I view it as completely reasonable that these issues would prevent many people from having a good night rest, which for a non-luxury hotel, is pretty much the only purpose of the establishment. As a business owner myself, having received a single review like this would have prompted me to take this action (given that the remedy is easy, and inexpensive - it seems that the cost to remedy these issues would be on the order of one-night's rate per room.). Having multiple reviews over multiple years and no action is really quite astonishing. For that reason, I cannot recommend this hotel, and I would strongly suggest staying elsewhere unless the sleeping environment mentioned above is your preference (hey, to...

In short: Small and intimate hotel that provided exceptional service and experience of Japanese culture. Exceeded my expectations with the overall experience and friendly service.

Just a note of praise of all the little touches in the room we enjoyed:

Staff were friendly and knowledgeable in so many different languages. Considerate in small ways, like providing detailed recommendations of the area (we referred to the Hotel Passport all the time !) and offering to help us make reservations when needed. Free smartphone service (Handy phone): such a thoughtful touch for our modern needs in the digital age. It comes with 4G internet that you can use for Google maps, browsing, calling, and as a hotspot. The browsing homepage is set to an English website with detailed articles recommending and reviewing common locations to visit. Breakfast was spectacular and healthy (if we spent all day eating street food, we can at least count on our breakfast to be full of greens). The dining area and bento box portions were small, but it was understandable given that the hotel houses few guests and the boxes used famously high quality ingredients. We fell head over heels in love with the specialty bread and jam, we bought six bottles home! The first thing we missed the night we checked out was the bed— we didn’t realize how spoiled by the amazing AirWeave mattress we were until we returned home and realized how much our backs and hips ached from our regular mattress. Green tea and hojicha tea packs were wonderful. The ceramic tea cups in the room and at breakfast enhanced the taste of the tea and gave the simple act of drinking and brewing tea much more elegance. We have a newfound appreciation of pottery and tea after staying at this hotel. We went out of our way and visited a specialized tea shop (Ippudo) just to explore (and purchase) the different kinds of green teas Kyoto has to offer and even tried to attend a pottery workshop to make our own tea sets (we didn’t go because we didn’t make a reservation in time and we really should’ve planned that better). We really have to thank the hotel for this new interest!

Very minuscule complaints: Little variety in breakfast bentos. Only two out of four dishes in the breakfast bentos change everyday, so if guests are not fans of the mixed greens and potato salad, they’re stuck with it. The hotel makes it up by providing ample options in the self-serve section for breakfast, which carries three types of delicious specialty bread, two kinds of jam, granola/cereal, wild berries, rice, and daily soup) We got too used to the amazing high-tech Toto toilet. The smart toilet knew when we were finished doing our business and automatically flushed for us, and this made us develop a bad habit of thinking the toilet will flush itself when leaving the bathroom. There were a few too many times outside of the hotel where I’ve almost left the bathroom without flushing, thinking it would flush by itself. This is also another thing that we may splurge on when we get back home, which is, on top of the tea and pottery, more things for us to sink...

We arrived at 10.30am trying to leav our bags in the hotel but there was no one there to attend to us. There was a card there to tell us to call the mobile number but we only have data sim. After half an hour wondering what to do, a lady turned up. She told us that we cannot check till 4pm. We said we only want to leave bags there and will go touring around. She made a few phone call, then told over our bag. We asked her for directions to go to kyomizu temple. We were shown the completely opposite direction.(we weren't expecting a local to be worse than goggle map). That put us off our schedule. We went back to check in at 10.18pm. Again there was no one there but there was a sign saying you have to call this number for emergency. Again we have plenty of data but can't make call. We saw our bags were left outside, we were panicked(it's like in the dramas you were being kick out when you don't pay your rent in time).as we were so desperate, someone appeared from nowhere(God sent). She told us "check in finished at 8pm. Any check in after 8pm, There is late check-in fee of 1000yen per person 🙄 (and we have 4 people with 2 rooms booked and fully paid) and after 10pm there will be no more check.😣we explained that the lady from this morning had not told us anything but just asked us to come back to check-in after 4pm. The lady at night was very helpful, she explained that she is only a bar tender but will call the owner and ask for us、she then told us that the owner said he has sent us email to let us know that he cannot check us in after 10pm. (I mean who will check your mailbox every minute when you are on holiday).again we must thank the bar tender to try to talk for us with the owner. Eventually we were able to check into our room. The bed was very hard and our room was second floor right opposite Lawson neon sign.(it's a white night). We book this place because we wanted to try out what it say in their website that they serve Kyoto style japanese breakfast. All we had for breakfast was 2 toast with some Spinach and tomato, cereals and yoghurt. When I question them about the Japanese breakfast, the answer was "you have to book for it when you check in"😵. But I paid good money for it. So my experience was totally not Japanese. One more thing each time when the staff call the owner they always speak in English to the owner over the phone🤔I used to study in Kyoto 30 years ago, this is definitely not Kyoto style. Very disappointing. I would recommend not to go...