Wakamatsu Honten — Local services in Narita

The appeal ends at the front door

The location was fantastic and very convenient to Naritasan and Omotesando but unfortunately thats about all the good I can say about this place.

Firstly, let’s start with the customer service, or lack of. I emailed them while we were in the train on the way to ryokan, advising of our arrival time at Narita station and requesting for a shuttle service as was advertised on their website. They replied with “Please call us when you arrive at the station”. As we were travelling with a data-only SIM card we decided to just walk the 15mins despite the heat and 90% humidity.

The external facade was appealing, especially being located on the old shopping street but once inside it’s a completely different story. All you need do is look at the carpets and you will get a sense of how old and grimey this place is.

We, a family of four with two young children, specifically asked for a no -smoking room. Sure, the room they assigned us was non-smoking but they put us on a floor that not only housed the communal smoking room, but was right next door to our room. It didn’t take much to feel like we were suffocating.

The room itself didn’t feel or look clean at all with dusty, grotty carpet at the entrance, smelly shoe cabinet, stained walls, smelly toilet. Everything inside this room was dated and run-down with a gloomy, horrible feeling to go with it.

Once shown inside the room, the porter then spent the next 20mins laying out our futon. Usually at more basic ryokans, this is done by the guest themselves, or, at higher end establishments, they wait until you head out for dinner to do this. So it wasn’t really appreciated that we have to wait twenty minutes for him to do it when we were just shown to our room and all we wanted was to have some privacy.

The day we checked out, we asked about their shuttle service again as we were leaving at 4pm and their shuttle is between 3-6pm. The reply was, we only pick up from the station at this time. Umm...what’s the difference if you have to head their anyway and from our arrival experience, the shuttle is clearly not waiting at the station.

I chose this place because of the high ratings and glowing reviews but unfortunately did not experience any of the things that other traveller did and neither do I understand how this place could have received such positive reviews. We are by no means travel snobs and have stayed at many a basic accommodation. But there is basic clean and basic horrible. This completely falls into the latter category and had the room rate been considered cheap, I could’ve turned a blind eye but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case.

Terrible place, terrible customer service and unfortunately for us, it was for our last night in Japan and has left a horrible memory of what was otherwise a...

Musty smelling toilet|- Very old fittings and room doors that don't close fully|- Friendly staff but poor English overall and unobservant|- Old-fashioned owner with very poor customer skills, cannot problem-solve|- Bath and water mixer very hard to use as they are very old fashioned|- Fridge full of cold drinks, but with no space to put anything except tiny bottles and some small items|I was very surprised and unhappy with what the ryokan owner told us today - the last night of our 10-night trip across the wider Tokyo region. Some context first: my flight departs at 6.20pm tomorrow and we have to check out of our room at 10am, as planned. What was unplanned, was that I was only told at 7pm today that they would have maintenance coming so there are 'no staff' and 'the whole ryokan will be closed', so my elderly parents (78YO and 70YO) and I would have to take our 3 large luggage bags with us by 2pm. They will not be able to hold our luggage for even 2 hours until 4pm, nor will they be able to call us a taxi; we will have to walk to the taxi stand ourselves. What is funny, is that as I was negotiating with the owner in the lobby, 4 new guests arrived to check-in. Now, there is a whole hotel with numerous rooms and new guests, but he cannot (will not) hold our luggage for 2 hours more? He proceeded to tell us they 'are not responsible to us for anything once we check out' and that 'there is nothing he can do' and when I said hotels in other countries hold the luggage for their guests after they check out for the same day until the flight time, he said 'this is Japan, not other countries'. Wow. I get it that he's used to running things his way, but this makes for a horrible customer experience. We had booked this ryokan over 6 weeks ago online, so there were many opportunities to tell us in advance of this scheduled maintenance. One great opportunity was yesterday at 5.30pm, when we checked in. ||Side points are:|- Staff are not trained on the safety equipment in the rooms. I had taken the emergency torchlight off the charging mount and instead of the staff reinserting it, I had to figure out how and tell the staff (to his credit he really tried)|- Housekeeping were unaware they took my mother's personal spoon by mistake and phew! the translation issues... we got it back though|- Housekeeping replaced the tolietries we clearly had no need of, but not the items we used up! Basically they gave us 3 more toothbrushes in addition to the 3 unused, but did not top up the cotton pads. It was all very clearly placed in the bathroom for them to observe.|- Creepy...

Girlfriend and I stayed at this lovely establishment for 2 nights and we highly recommend this authenticate Honten "resort" for its superior customer services. The hotel staff were so friendly and made us feel like home, special thanks to Ms. Chen and the dining staff - I left my purse in the dining room with cash and passport and it was easily retrieved shortly after thanks to them! The hotel is one of the original and built right across from the famous Naritasan Shinshoji temple (less than 10-min away from Narita International airport). Naturally the building has history yet its tidy and spotless. Comfortable platform beds are provided on the traditional Japanese tatami with traditional tea set and tea. The room is equipped with a toilet and a separated sink, you take shower/bath in the public bathing area - This might take adjustment to get used to (but hey it's the Japanese way). The bathing area is open 24-hr so you can always pick odd hour to avoid others if you are super shy. A night stay includes dinner and breakfast and they are both traditional Japanese set style using locally sourced ingredients wth many varieties and all so delicious (and picturesque)!! The street in front of the hotel are full of small traditional shops and restaurants/cafe and one can easily spend a day browsing through them. The city of Narita feels like a small version of Kyoto. It's great for short 1 or 2 night trip before hoping on or off the plane. It's still rather unknown (for now) = peace & quite compared to major tourist attractions. You should go now before others find out this...