ORI Rokkaku — Hotel in Kyoto

This is my second trip to Japan. After Tokyo, we went to Kyoto and I was very pleasantly surprised by the large nice room at the Resi-Stay Amaterrace location. Resi-Stay is a Kyoto based hotel chain with several Resi-Stay hotels all over Kyoto. It is sort of like a Hotel-AirB&B. It is an inconvenience arrangement in which you have to first check in at their Check-In office just across the street from the main Kyoto JR station. Then you haul your luggage to your hotel location. We booked the Amaterrace location so that was a good hump away and so we waited for their free shuttle bus at 3:30 pm to drive us there. Otherwise, we have to either take a taxi (about 1100Y) or take a subway train and walk more with our luggage.||||Once we got to our hotel, we were very surprised by the large size room and how new and clean the place is. The rooms are almost as large as most N.American size hotel room, complete with a tiny kitchen, good size bathroom plus an additional sink and makeup area. The hotel provides free washing machines and dryer so we were able to wash our clothes. The only drawback of the Amaterrace area is the closest subway station (Shijo) is 15 minutes away by walking or 9 blocks. We walk to Gion every day from there and takes about 30 minutes to Gion or just 15 minutes to the Nishiki Market area for good food and shopping. I would use Resi Stay again but perhaps pick one that is close to main...

This is a No-Frills hotel and not worthy of paying that price for it. e.g.||1. the reception counter is at a separate location which is near to Kyoto train station however considering the luggage we have, it is a huge effort to move around with it from one place to another. ||2. No hotel staff to meet us up at a specific location to guide us, and we have to push and carry our luggage up and down all the way there, and all members have to be present at the counter for registration. The hotel staff does not fill in the form for us even though they already have our passports photocopied.||3. Room keys do not give at the counter but a set of instructions telling us where we can find them! ||4. The hot-water supply was inadequate and intermittently cut-off! Can you imagine in the middle of the showing and the freezing cold water shower onto you and the whole bathroom instantly filled with cold air! ||5. No room services, have to clean and tidy the room by yourself, manage your own rubbish as well.||||One plus point, they did provide us with a one-way chauffeur service to the property we booked. Overall, the room was clean, tidy and well equipped except for the hot-water supply. ||||Not so nice to say this, we survived our 3 nights stay there and for sure we will not go back to this hotel anymore or hotels with this...

Our room at Ori Rokkaku was the biggest we stayed at in Japan. It was great to have some extra space, a proper wardrobe and a little kitchenette. However we did find it to be quite noisy when people were in the corridor and the AC was making loud dripping sounds in the rain.

The location is OK - there's a nearby bus line that takes you to Kyoto Station, and Nishiki Market and Nijo Castle are both walkable.

The staff we encountered were friendly and welcoming. Sadly, they can't help with luggage forwarding (although the hotel does receive suitcases from other hotels), which was a bit disappointing for us. We did manage to find a Yamato office a short walk away so sent our luggage onto our next destination from there.

Whilst Japan is a super safe country, I found it a bit off-putting that anyone could walk into the hotel and access the corridors/luggage storage/laundry/etc., especially when there's no staff around overnight. I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable staying here alone. The safety lock to prevent people coming in from outside was also broken in our room.

Overall, for the price paid the quality and size of the room was great, but the Ori Rokkaku lacked some of the amenities that we enjoyed using in other Japanese cities so I would try...