Henn na Hotel Tokyo Nishikasai — Hotel in Tokyo

A feature hotel. One of the more interesting Tokyo hotels, and in fact, Japan hotels. It was one of the first hotels we booked and we were excited to see robot dinosaurs manning the desk. Being another one of the chain Tokyo hotels, you could get various different types of robots manning the reception desks. On balance, we preferred the idea of dinosaurs. In reality, it was the proximity to DisneySea and the promise of a free shuttle right to the park that lead to us booking this particular Tokyo hotel.||The Robot Dinosaurs|The hotel reception is decked out in a Jurassic, nature theme with two robot dinosaurs at reception. Rather underwhelmingly, they didn’t do anything other than move their heads, lips and just read aloud the words appearing on the self-check-in screen on the guest side of the reception desk. Entertainment value aside, they weren’t particularly useful.||The Room|T’was rare we had free watchable media on the hotel TV rooms. In this feature hotel, however, we didn’t even have the option of paying for it. There was no TV, on the TV. It was filled with screens of hotel information only. There was a strange clothes steamer thing in the room, which ain’t nobody got time to meddle with that. The technical toilets are bad enough… |I could have stayed in a tent for all I cared though because we were staying here for DISNEYSEA and that was exciting enough.||The Hotel Facilities|There were three prize claw machines in the foyer, and the breakfast area doubled as a free and unlimited bar on the evening. Yes, you read that right: a free bar. Hotel amenities were located close to the lift (for which you needed the room key for security). This prevented lazy and unthoughtful use and subsequent wastage of the disposable items. |The “bar” consisted of some flavoured liqueur bottles laid out with a comparatively small quantity of soft drinks as mixers. We had a bit of amusement trying a couple of options but then retired as the novelty wore off and it wasn’t very relaxing. Nice enough novelty. And who doesn’t like a free tipple. ||The Breakfast|The first morning we were there, my stomach wasn’t wanting food but to get on the road to the Disney Park. I nibbled what I could, when do I ever turn away free/included food? And the next morning, was able to take stock of what was there a little better. 😊 |It was a bit naff, with not too much for me there anyway. Curry, rice, and some salad. I tried vermicelli salad, pineapple, curry sauce and all eaten with rounded chopsticks. Which are the advanced level, by the way 😉 No bread to be seen. We got used to the odd, odd breakfasts and food eventually… ||DisneySea Shuttle|The shuttle bus is small. Perhaps 15 people can fit, I’d say. The timings are posted at reception, and you need to queue there in the morning to get a little bus ticket pass. No pass, no travel. These are, understandably, limited. My boyfriend went during breakfast (30 minutes before travel, although we highly recommend perhaps 45+ minutes to be sure) and successfully got us two passes.|The shuttle leaves on the dot (we booked 8am). Our’s was full for the journey, although it wasn’t until the last minute where folks boarded. For the return journey, you must wait at the designated Stand C and know what your bus looks like. There are several different shuttle buses for various Tokyo hotels and companies. This can mean yours may arrive a little tardy, as ours did, but this is to be understood with traffic and everyone vying to get stopped at the stands. They worked very well, and are...

I booked a long-term stay at Hen na Hotel Nishi-Kasai for almost a month because I had a pleasant experience staying here for the same length of time last year, but I had to leave after just three nights because of multiple problems.||The first room had serious water leakage from the air conditioner and felt very damp, though I didn’t know the exact cause at first. After I explained this to the hotel, they moved me to another room. However, that new room felt just as uncomfortable, so I purchased a hygrometer myself to measure the humidity. It turned out to be extremely high (80–90%), so I asked the hotel again if they could clean the AC or fix the issue. Instead, they moved us to another room on a different floor — but that room was even worse, with humidity around 85% even with the AC running.||They then suggested yet another room but sent me to check it myself with my own hygrometer, instead of properly inspecting it themselves. It turned out the humidity was dangerously high in all four rooms I stayed in, even with the air conditioner on.||The manager and sub-manager both seemed very nice and kind, but they just couldn’t do their jobs properly. The sub-manager told me that the hotel has been suffering from this humidity issue since the end of last summer and that they have been trying to fix it. From his explanation, it’s clear that this problem was already known — yet they still moved me and my child from one room to another without a real solution. I am just appalled.||In the end, there was no proper fix — only apologies and repeated room changes with no real resolution. No compensation was offered for the nights I had to spend in these uncomfortable and unhealthy conditions.||Because of the constant high humidity, I now realize that the rooms were probably not hygienic either — my 9-year-old son got bites on his feet that may have been from mites or bedbugs. He also caught a cold because the only way to lower the humidity was to keep the air conditioner too low (although that only lowered the humidity to 75% at most).||High humidity like this in summer can easily lead to mold and unsanitary conditions, which is a serious health risk, especially for long-term stays.||My vacation time was wasted repeatedly unpacking and packing, moving between rooms, inspecting them with a hygrometer myself, suffering from the same problem again and again instead of relaxing with my family.||I ended up canceling the rest of my stay and moving out.||This hotel might be fine for a quick overnight stay if you don’t mind the humidity, but I strongly do not recommend it for longer stays — especially in the humid summer months. It’s especially concerning if you have young children.||When I left, the sub-manager said the usual line in Japanese — that they were sorry they couldn’t provide a comfortable stay and that they would take my valuable feedback to improve. I hope that is true and that the hotel management takes proper maintenance and hygiene much more seriously, so that other guests don’t have to suffer...

Bottom line: if you have a available rooms, and you refuse to allow guests to check-in a few hours early without charging them for essentially another night, then you are money-hungry, inhospitable, scum-of-the-earth, and you've already ruined the experience for me. Foreign guests have been airborne for, in some cases, more than fifteen hours, to arrive here, and refusing them access to an available room is putrid.

I thought for sure that by arriving at 11:00 AM (four hours before check-in was allowed, but right at the mandatory check-out time) I would be allowed to check-in early. I did all this "pre-check-in" work ahead of time, and it still denied me a room, so I would advise you to save your precious vacation time and skip "pre-check-in", as it does you no favors.

A worker appeared after my QR code wouldn't work and said they could check me in early for ~$60 USD, which is essentially the cost of having stayed the night, so I refused and slept on the only couch in the lobby for four hours. I couldn't believe they had available rooms and refused to let guests check-in to them without price gouging them. The lobby claw machine music was so penetrating that my airplane ear plugs weren't enough to block it out, so I spent part of my nap on the handicapped bathroom floor. It was cold, but at least it was quiet.

The communal dryer barely has any firepower. After three twenty-minute cycles, the handful of clothes were still incredibly damp, at a ridiculous cost of 600 JPY. In the USA, an entire dryer full of clothes is super warm after fifty minutes.

There is no option for you to speak with an employee about questions concerning your room or the surrounding area, as only one of them seems to work in the building at a time, and he/she is hiding behind a black curtain like The Wizard of Oz. They also do not speak English, so you must have a cell phone with a translation app ready.

Breakfast options were always the same without even one change in food or drink for six days.

Their shuttle sounds like a good idea until you learn they operate on a fear-based system where they threaten you will not get a seat on the shuttle if you're not one of the first 20 people in line 30 minutes ahead of time to get a ticket. Rather than just run the shuttle as many times as it takes to serve their guests, they lazily offer only a handful of departure and arrival times to the first 20 guests, which scares you into wasting your precious vacation time racing to get in line for a ticket. Meanwhile, the van sits unused outside the rest of the day.

The location is quite lousy as well. It's quite far by subway to both airports (almost two hours one-way from Narita by the Narita "Express" depending on when you arrive), and there are no sights or attractions nearby.

I was forewarned that Tokyo was a heartless, unwelcoming, spit-in-your-face kind of place, and my experience on the Tokyo subway and being forced to sleep on the lobby couch very quickly confirmed the...