Hotel Hillarys — Hotel in Osaka

Hotel is about 15 minutes walk away from the train station so it can be pretty annoying for those that don't normally walk around. However, lots of shops around the area and 7eleven is right downstairs. For breakfast, you could either get your tickets during the morning of or upon check-in on the 2nd floor of your hotel. You have a decent choice of things to choose from for your breakfast. You can also have udon noodles for breakfast as well. However, you only have 30 minutes to eat since the little breakfast area/cafe that they have don't have much seating area available.

Moving on to the room, the room was alright. Three people fit in well. One twin bed was provided and a double bed was provided as well. The TV had VOD so we were watching Youtube everytime we got back to the hotel, which was nice. The bathroom had a fair share of amenities from hair brushes, shavers, etc. Shampoo, conditioner, and body soap are also available even though you can also get your choice down by the lobby as well. They have small cups for you to take to your hotel if you don't like the available shampoo and conditioner in your room. The lobby also has lots of chairs for you to sit on and a decent view of the street right outside. The laundry, conveniently on the same level as the lobby, also has two available washers and three dryers. Compared to other hotels, they require you to get laundry detergent as the washers don't come with one apparently. The dryers don't work too efficiently compared to American dryers so you'll have to dry your clothes for longer. They also have select choices of manga on the 2nd floor by the laundry/drink bar area. The drink bar comes with a few soft drink choices, teas, and coffee choices. Also comes with cups, creamer, and gum syrups. To me, the drink bar was the highlight of this hotel.

Other than all of that, the hotel is centered within the Denden town, which is basically the anime/electronic area of Osaka. Didn't take advantage of this perk due to us only spending one day exploring Osaka and spending two days exploring Kyoto while staying at this hotel.

I do want to note that the lobby is not usually manned. The lobby personnel have a little room right by the lobby kiosk. Even if they can see you through the little slit of space since the door was not closed all the way, they won't come to your attention even though you're staring at one of them and you see them make eye contact with you several times. I literally had to yell out "excuse me" in Japanese for one of them to come out. When one of the guys came out, it looked like he didn't even want to assist you with anything as if you are...

Firstly, at check in, all staff insistently speaks and replies everything in Japanese even after handing them my foreign passport(a reason to highlight this for a hotel operator will be explained later). This obviously results in me not understanding a word mentioned for "terms and conditions ".

Requesting for a second key card took a long while as well due to all the repeated explanations for a simple extra key card. As a couple, we always believe in 1 key each.

However, throughout the entire stay, one of us have to consistently visit the front desk to "renew" the access and the worst part is that this is a Russian roulette to see which card works which is annoying when we finished 1 day of walking but still have to run back down to their front desk.

On the second day, we slept in and when we were awake near noon, we saw the house keeping lady still outside our unit, request for them to simple clean(mainly clearing the trash we accumulated on the first day) was again retaliated with a barrage of Japanese STATEMENTS.

When visiting the front desk as instructed by the lady, we were again met with the same resistance felt and they blamed us for waking up late resulting in no house keeping for our room. Accepting it being the second day, we carried on with our day.

On the 3rd day, there was a water outage due to emergency works (which was never notified to me before arrival), we headed out early because of that and to my horror, coming back, again the room was not cleaned after all my walking.

Now this is where the standards are beyond any hospitality industry standards(even AirBNB are better with great rates and space). While asking the front desk, the first accusations came stating that we did not hit the minimum night requirements before they will clean the room(pure bullshit which was exposed), next, they claimed from a printed sheet of FAQ that I booked the "eco" option which results in them not doing their job,

Now comes the absolute professional part, after showing my booking details of no options of "eco" room, they go into a serious Japanese discussion with the manager making sure they have a good tussle of arguments of what they should or should not say to myself.

Next, they whip out their phone that they google translate to a series of basic sentences in short to say that their booking system reflects details from booking.com is right and my agoda.com booking is wrong.

The end result is a DEMAND I PAY 1000YEN TO HAVE MY ROOM BASICALLY CLEAN.

Was a repeated visitor but THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME EVER!!! Stay at...

The hotel isn't the easiest to find, though quite close to trains. It is about 5 mins from the JR Namba Station and 12 mins from the other, IF you follow the Google map directions and take the side streets. Apple maps directed us on the main streets and it took 25mins when we first arrived. This, we realized, is why the reviews are so mixed on location and time. Would highly recommend looking up directions on Google maps before arriving. ||The area is charmless and full of Manga and comic book stores. ||The hotel feels dated and rooms slightly claustrophobic, though spotlessly clean. There's also no view from the windows which are frosted over. There's no safe but there's a TV and hairdryer. Decent shower and water pressure. Staff speak passable English.||There's a coffee and shampoo bar (!) downstairs, where you squeeze shampoo into plastic containers to use back in your rooms. We didn't see the point of this as the bathrooms have toiletries anyway. ||Breakfast is odd though buffet styled. Curry at 7am is a bit too much but there's some ham, bread and eggs which works. You are given an hour time slot to eat. They were playing some sad Christmas tunes while we were there.||Coffee bags in the room are meant for your shoes as deodorizers and not meant to be drunk. Could not figure out the odd kettle either. ||Hotel is passable for a night, but extremely poor value hence the one star review. It cost US$140 a night with taxes, which is horrendous considering the other options...