MIMARU TOKYO IKEBUKURO — Hotel in Tokyo

Front Desk: This hotel was marketed as having basic concierge services but we were pleasantly surprised with the exceeding service we received. Christian (I hope I have his name right) was so amazing and helped us trouble shoot throughout our stay. He even went above and beyond to research shuttle bus services and how we'd go about it with our luggage. We needed to leave on a heavy rainy day and all taxis were booked up but he and the staff repeatedly tried and succeeded in hailing one for us. All the front desk staff were friendly and knowledgable. We had also stayed at a 5 star property during our trip and the customer service here at Mimaru far exceeded that of the higher end property.

Oh the front doors lock at 10pm or so. Be sure to bring your room key so that you can beep to get inside as no one can let you in after hours. I believe there was an intercom door bell but I didn't try using it.

Rooms: We booked the two bedroom suite for our family of 4. My friends were a family of 5. The rooms were very spacious even for North American standards and came fully equipped with kitchen, washer/dryer/microwave. You can borrow an oven toaster from front desk too. The rooms were clean. The beds were on the hard side but not a big deal. There were two bathrooms. One with a tub and another with just a shower box.

Laundry: The dryer in our room seemed to not dry so well (same for my friend's room) so we headed to the commons area on the 2nd floor where they have a row of laundry machines. There's a fee to use these machines but we found the dryers to work better than those in our room. The laundry area is well appointed with a tatami mat floor with bean bag chairs that you can sit on and wait for your clothes to finish. There was also a TV and vending machine so I saw several people just hanging out. You can ask the front desk for free laundry soap.

Location/Access: It was a 5 minute walk from Ikebukuro Station. This fastest route requires you to walk through the red light district with some touts and girls in maid outfits. But during our 7 day stay there, my husband was approached once when he was walking alone but asides from that they ignored us. We had teens and some elementary kids in tow but nothing was too graphic on the streets to cause concern. You can avoid this road all together and go around but it'll take you more like 10 minutes to the hotel. There is a Family Mart on the corner. The fast food joints around the station like McDonald's, Denny's, Gusto, Saizeriya were open quite late. The area houses a few schools so many of the stores are geared for teenagers and so finding reasonably priced meals and having access to fun stores is amazing here. Donqi was open 24 hours as well as a nearby drug store. Great for jet lag days to do some shopping. If you are into anime or character stores, Sunshine City mall is about a 15-20 minute walk and has everything you can imagine. Pokemon, Kirby, Hello Kitty, One Piece etc. There's also a planetarium and aquarium in the mall.

Overall a great family/friend vacation location with well appointed spacious rooms. Bonus is the friendly international staff who seemed to all...

This review is probably 4 months too late. We had a family (of 5) holiday at Tokyo. The first for the fam, but 2nd time for me. I also stayed at this hotel the last time - so this is the 2nd time at this amazing hotel. You will probably read about the great value of the rooms here, particularly for larger groups. And all those positive reviews you read are absolutely spot on. Amazing hotel, amazing location and cleanliness. I will continue to stay in this hotel every time I visit Tokyo if I were in a big group.

What I'd like to share with everyone is the amazing service of the staff.

Here's what happened - one of my teens, misplaced her passport while shopping at Ginza. We didn't realize it until the next morning. That's right, the NEXT MORNING. We had planned to be out all day, at another part of Tokyo. During lunch, I decided I would head back to the hotel room, and search through all our luggages and the room, in case the passport had dropped somewhere that morning, or it was packed away by mistake.

After tirelessly searching, I gave up. It was no where to be found. I called my wife and resorted to having to report a lost passport at the nearby police station, as part of the process to get a new passport at our country's embassy. And we know how painful that process could be. Thankfully though, we had another 4 days in Tokyo (imagine if it were the day before our flight home!)

I called the front desk, Seira picked up the call. I explained to her (in English what had happened). In an instant, she asked if she could come to my room and talk about recollections where we last visited. I said yes. In minutes, she came by, notebook in hand. I recounted the places we visited the day before at Ginza, then Shinjuku, where we ended up for dinner the night before. She took down notes, searched on Google maps with me.

Seira offered to help call up the stores we visited, before the last option of lodging a police report. Which, she also offered to accompany me as the local police did not speak much English. I had already given up searching so I agreed. She left the room and I went on to call the embassy to explain what had happened.

In minutes, I received a call again from an excited Seira, one of the stores we shopped at Ginza informed her they still had the passport (!!) and they were planning to report to the police station at 5pm that afternoon if no one had come to claim it. It was 3pm. She was advised to inform us to head to the store, and collect it in person.

Of course we were super relieved and thrilled! We rushed back to Ginza and collected back the passport, much to all our relief.

Story aside, and yes this is also a testament to the Japanese people and the culture but to this day, we will never ever ever forget what Seira did for us. No words would ever describe how thankful we were for Seira. I can personally vouch for the impeccable and selfless quality of service that Mimaru staff possess. We will never forget her, and made sure that we gave her a gift as a token of our utmost appreciation.

Mimaru Tokyo...

First thing first, I don't think I can recommend this hotel/service aparent (full comment below)Location is not bad, about 5-7 minutes walk from JR Ikebukuro station and there are many restaurants on the way (some open after midnight) and Donki is nearby too. The 2 bedrooms family suite itself is very clean and spacious for us (5 adults+ a 4 yrs old child). Overall the facility is nice and very ideal for family with young children, as hotel room is generally quite small in Japan.Would like to share a special experience during my stay thou. The fire alarm went off on our 1st night at 02:30am and the kept on for about 15mins. Interestingly the recorded warning/evacuating announcement is in Japanese ONLY and I think over 90% of the guests that night didn't understand any of it (me included). Everyone came out from their room and there was no clear sign of fire, still for safety sake many people started evacuating using the stairs and when we almost reached the ground floor, a so-called hotel staff (wearing a staff card or something not in hotel uniform) yelled that there was no fire and everyone could return to their room - but again in Japanese! The reason I understood was I believe that lady is a Chinese and she yelled in Mandarin for 2 or 3 times when she was running around. The hotel front desk was close after 11pm and seems she was the only overnight staff on duty. The alarm was shut down and a few announcements were made thru the PA system 15mins after but again ONLY in Japanese, and many Korean, Thai, Westerners guests still had no idea what was going on. Anyways, they unlocked the elevators so everyone started going back to the room. My overall comment, the hard product (aparent/facility/cleanliness) is good but hotel management esp. the crisis management is way below standard, clearly there is no SOP in place for these situations and announcements in Japanese ONLY is totally...