Hotel Green Plaza Joetsu — Hotel in Minamiuonuma

Room: Small and congested. Mine has an additional sofa that occupies most of spaces. They have rooms with tatami + beds which at least has spaces to put luggages. My room is so narrow that I could not even open up my luggage. A small tea pot for boiling water. I usually have my vacuum flask and fill in hot water in resturant. No hair dryer. Toothbrush and tooth paste on first floor. Take it yourself. No cleaning every day. But will put new fresh towels on the floor at your entrance. On the floor! Yes.. And if you want them to throw your garbage, put them next to the shoe rack. It means they will open your door and will not step in any inches more than your shoe rack. Bathroom - small - but reasonable well equipped - can only cater one person at a time. Keep your own bathroom clean as they don't clean them till you checkout. Suggest bring along slipper for ease of walking around in hotel. TV: No, I didn't watch as it is in behind the bed. No space to watch. Table... no, it is so narrow with TV on it.. no space to put any other things. WIFI = yes, it is one of few hotels that provide WIFI in the room. I used my own WIFI box. Special note: Your room key and locker keys are together. If you loose any one of them, you have to pay.... i don't remember exact figure but it can amount to 20,000 YEN. So, leave them with the receptionist if you going to ski! Reception: Helpful but only one can speak English. The rest no. So, bring along your google translator. It helps. Shops: One shop sells many stuffs, ranging from souvenirs, ski stuffs to daily stuffs to drinks, even diaper. Rental area: Also has one shop that sells more professional ski and snowboarding stuffs. Convenience: Ski in out - so ski area is at back door. Hot bath: Two hot baths. One small one and one big one. The big one has an inner bath and outer bath. Nice place.Opens from 06:00 till 24:00, except closed for cleaning from 8:30am-11:30am. Bring your own towel. They offer locker free and you can lock your important stuffs before you change your clothes. Free shuttlebus: Three places: One to ECHIGO YUZAWA STATION train station(stop at east side and to return meet at same place) that has shops. Not big area. Max 2 hours shop around and eating there. If you want, you can walk to the West exit and eat at some restuarants along the road. The other two locations are for ski area. NOthing there.. just a train stop station. Need to reserve. Ask receptionist for help. Good thing about reservation is that the driver will wait for you. So, if you decide to take earlier bus, please inform the driver so that he will not keep waiting for you to show up. The bus will still show up at those hours. So, if you end early you can always go back early. But please inform the driver that you have changed your schedule. Breakfast Buffet style - many things to choose from. Same every day. So, no hurry to try everything on one day. I find that many coffee cups have stains. Guess they have lack of manpower. Use machine wash. So, when you use the coffee cup, take a look first before filling in with your water or milk or coffee. Dinner - same place as in the breakfast - so also buffet. Lunch - you can get lunch outside the hotel, walk out of back of hotel in the ski area, it is located under the bridge or you can eat at the cafe. If lazy, then eat...

I read some the "Terrible" reviews to get an idea of what bad things to expect. I have to say after staying at the hotel, I found all of the WHINERS to be either pampered or born with a silver spoon who want everything for FREE! ||||This hotel is very old and it is a bit dirty however, I found it to be exactly what you paid for. My family and I stayed there Aug 2015. We were looking for a short cheap family vacation and we found it at Hotel Green Plaza Joetsu. ||||I will address some of the "Terrible" comments below;||||1. Someone POSTED "The carpets are dirty" - Yes, they are dirty however, there are a lot of tourist coming and going everyday. In the winter, I imagine that that carpets take a beating from guest snowboarding/skiing. It is difficulty to keep the carpets perfect with the high volume of guest during winter. I can deal with it because I did not intend to stay in the hotel/room all day.||||2. Someone POSTED "It takes 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other" - The hotel is big and beautiful like a chalet you would enjoy in Europe. Since we were not there to stay in the room, we enjoyed walking through the hotel to the restaurants, game center, lobby and sauna. We got our morning exercise and after eating a big meal, the walk was nice. I guess some people are just LAZY. ||||3. Someone POSTED "Could not control temp in room". This is true but I brought a small fan so I could be comfortable when in the room which was only to change and sleep. The room was not hot at all but I need to have some cool air when I sleep. ||||4. Someone POSTED " The food was not good and there was a line to be seated already at 0800. We found the food to be GOOD for the price we paid. The morning buffet had plenty of eggs, sausages, bacon, toast and plenty more veggies. For those who had to wait because the restaurants were full by 0800, either get up early and beat the crowds or be prepared to wait. Stop complaining and enjoy your stay. You could make a reservation and walk around the hotel till it is your time to eat. ||||This is a family resort and it was great! They have a festival every night where families can enjoy Japanese style games and activities. They even have safety fireworks. ||||The pool was a short walk down the hill. It is not deep at all, it was about waist high at the deepest end. I recommend bring floating devices. They have electric air pumps to save you from having to blow it help yourself. There are a couple of water slides, a train ride (not too long but the kids enjoyed), a big slip n slide, merry go round and Go Karts which you must be in the 5th grade to drive or you can ride with two in a Kart. ||||The sauna was typical spacious cold/hot/outdoor. It was really relaxing.||||The room was also typical two beds and futons for the kids nothing special The shower was nice, big tub and strong water pressure. For the price it was perfect because we did not intend to spend the day in the room. ||||They also had a monkey show, game center and arts and crafts for the kids. ||||All in all, it was a great hotel for the price. if you drive, you can bring your coolers, fans, snacks and drinks for the room and/or the pool.||||So if you make plans to go there, be prepared to be in a resort where you get what you pay for and enjoy...

This is a big hotel comprising of three buildings. The lobby is impressive. ||||It's said we can ski in/out, but in fact we need to walk up slope after skied to reach the hotel. We are supposed to be able to save the up slope walk by riding on a lift chair, but the queue is very long which despite the effort need to be made, walking up slope is much faster.||||Though there are some interesting slopes, this resort is not for snowboarders. Either the access to the lifts or that to the slopes is too flat, that requires some flipping or even striding if not walking, not to mention most of the slopes if not too flat will involve sections which requires us to flip, stride or walk.||||It's hard to find the ski map as firstly the cover is dominated by an advertisement, which it's hard to realize it's a ski map just by a glimpse. Secondly, it's not placed at the Front Desk or the rental shop counter. Thirdly, it's not enclosed in the check-in welcome pack even our package is a room+ski ticket one. Eventually we found it at the cloak room where we applied for a locker to store our equipment. Mind it, we didn't get a locker on our first night. The Front Desk stored our equipment and then we checked if any locker available the next morning at the cloak room. The Front Desk could not even help us to book the locker, so we had to wait for one before we could set out to ski.||[Note: the colouring scheme of the ski course here is different from the other resorts. Those marked red here are for beginners]||||Even the hotel was said to be full house, only two outlets were opened (as shown in the attached photos). More worse, the food offered in both outlets was the same. What more worse, the menus were totally identical during our two-day stay, not even the ingredients of the fresh salad or the desserts was changed. The worst of all, the fish on the sushi looked stale. We always find the sashimi and sushi in Japan great, even those in the 100 yen sushi restaurants. OMG, what were they offering here?||||However, the worst is yet to come. Our nightmare started when we opened the bathroom door. An awful smell of ammonia was immediately noticed. We asked for a thorough clean up, but it's the English-speaking receptionist we met at the check-in turned up to clean our bathroom as there was no housekeeping staff on duty after 22:00. Her cleaning had no effect and she turned down our request to change to another room as it's full-house. So eventually we were stuck in such a room for two days. ||||As we tried to find out the cause of such smell, we saw the moulds and dirt in the bathroom as in the attached photo. They were not cleaned even we were told the housekeeping had thoroughly cleaned our bathroom the next day. ||||Then we further discovered the dirty and wearing out condition in our room, like those at the curtain rail and of the cupboard.||||Everything in this hotel...