Hotel Superlatives

For some odd, inexplicable reason, I started a list of the hotels we stayed at and began assigning a superlative description to each of them. I think it adds a little flavour to an otherwise incredibly similar set of hotel stays. Since we're now in our final hotel of the trip, I thought I'd share the list with you.

1. Hotel Sky Court - Kawasaki
   Most first hotel!
   Lance assures me it was chosen for its proximity to Anato-no-Warehouse arcade and not because it was in the 'red light' district of town.
2. Hotel Dormy Inn - Otaru
   Best hotel robe!
   Most, if not all, hotels in Japan will have a robe available for their guests. In most cases, it's a fairly cheap Japanese style 'summer robe' called a Yukata. In some of the other hotels we've stayed at, they have chosen a slightly different style. The Dormy Inn in Otaru was the only we stayed at to have a top and bottom to put on. Not sure if it was just because of how new the hotel was, but they were super soft and cottony and more like traditional pyjamas.
3. Hotel Piano - Kiroro
   Biggest room!
   It was like having a small suite to ourselves. I guess they figure people who ski don't really travel light. We picked this hotel at the ski resort because it had more restaurants than the other one and because it's name was cooler than 'Mountain Hotel.'
4. Ascent Inn - Sapporo
   Most cacophonous toilet flush!
   It was very noisy. And it had only one flush option, instead of having the normal 'big flush' and 'little flush' options that most other hotel toilets have.
5. Hearton Inn - Osaka
   Most familiar!
   Most offending soap!
   This is one of the hotels we stayed at the last time we went to Japan. It was kind of nice knowing exactly where it would be and how to get there! It also gets the superlative of most offending soap because I got sprayed with soap one day, just before we were going to head out. The nozzle had gotten clogged with dry soap and I was going to wash my hands but instead of getting creamy white soap pumped into my hand it shot across the sink and all over my dark grey pants making an unsightly mark that wasn't going to be rinsed off quickly. So, I had to change into my other pants, which were luckily clean. All things considered, we did fairly well since the only 'stain' our clothes got was caused by soap.
6. Super Hotel Lohas - Nara
   Darkest room!
   Weakest shower!
   Hardest mattress! (tie)
   The room had blackout blinds which made it completely dark, even during daylight. The water pressure was also pretty low. But it was still a really convenient hotel since it was right by the train station. It was also pretty new and so it ties for another superlative 'Hardest Mattress!' The tie for this is shared with the other Super Hotel we stayed at. Both were new and I guess they decided to purchase the hardest mattresses they could find. We actually pulled out the extra blankets and slept on top of the duvet just to get some extra padding under us. At one point, I was so incredulous that it was an actual mattress and not a wooden plank or stack of bricks that we were sleeping on, that I pulled up the sheets to confirm the existence of a mattress.
7. Hotel Dormy Inn - Nagoya
   Most Meh!
   Biggest desk chair!
   Add this to the list of disappointments about Nagoya. We stayed here hoping for another great Dormy Inn experience but everything was rather mediocre. The only thing that did stand out was the desk chair, which was huge relative to the room. Couldn't really turn without bumping in to the things and the arms were so large that the chair had to be lowered so that you could reasonably pull it in to the desk.
   
8. Hearton Inn - Osaka
   see above
   
9. Super Hotel Lohas - Kyoto
   Most difficult to find!
   Hardest mattress! (tie)
   Partly because the two streets listed, aren't the actual streets that it's on. But, once we had an actual map, it was much easier. We walked within a block, couldn't find it, trekked all the way back to the train station where the Welcome Inn centre is and got them to book it for us and give us a map with instructions. It was very cute to hear the woman at the Welcome Inn centre list the attributes of the hotel. As she put it, "it is a new hotel here in Kyoto: it has a natural hot spring; we don't really know how." They were trying to be 'green' so they gave free bottles of water to guests who declined room cleaning services while they were there. But, then all the women got 5 free gifts of little sample beauty products for each day that they stayed there, the packaging of which kind of defeating the attempt to be more 'green.'
10. Kikunoyu - Matsumoto
    Best onsen ryokan!
    Ok, so it was the only traditional onsen ryokan we stayed at, but still! The baths were very nice and since we were the only guests there the first night, they opened the bigger one for us as a 'family bath.' Then we even got little gifts when we checked out (which made me feel incredibly guilty for not giving them a gift in return). We also ordered a traditional Japanese dinner there which was served in our room. As Lance mentioned, the sashimi was very fresh and I still can't believe I actually ate that much seafood!
11. Touganeya Hotel - Tokyo
    Most last hotel!
    It was a little tricky to find, but once we able to properly orient ourselves with the various landmarks listed on the map, it became a lot easier. I was just relieved and surprised that they let us check in early, since most places are pretty sticky about the 3:00 pm check-in time. We were going to try to stay in the same hotel that we stayed in last time, but it was completely booked. In fact, it took quite some effort for us to find a hotel that was not booked for the nights we were going to be here. So, when the vacancy here came up, we weren't about to start getting picky about it.