The fifth and last of our blog entries observing our places of stay this 18 day trip to Japan! We stayed at the APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae for just one night, so our notes would be probably limited by the fact that we didn’t spend much time in the hotel.
That out of the way. The reason why we had to squeeze in a last hotel on our last night in Japan was specifically because our flight home on Day 18 was departing mid-morning at 10AM. Since this was an international flight, and working backwards, it’d mean we’d need to be at Narita airport at the very latest by 8AM i.e. 2 hours before flight – and that’s really pushing it. Working backwards and given that the typical train rides from Matsumoto to Tokyo would take slightly more than 2.5 hours… well, you get the idea. So, we were pretty much resigned to the reality that we’d need to return to Tokyo on Day 17.
As for the place of stay, since Narita is not near Tokyo Central, it further meant we needed to first figure out our route options from Tokyo Central to Narita, then find a hotel with an easy connection with that route. We got lucky, in that Keisei-Ueno Station – where the Skyliner from Tokyo Central to Narita begins the journey from – has a couple of hotels near it. We opted for APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae largely because of how close the hotel is to Keisei-Ueno Station (it’s literally just opposite), and that the hotel looked reasonably new.
What wasn’t so great though was that we could not find a family room. So, it was two rooms for our family of four. Our comments on the actual stay!
We booked two Double Rooms, each equipped with a single double bed. We requested in our reservation remarks that we’d like adjacent rooms. The hotel noted this, but did not commit to supply such at the point of reservation. Fortunately, we were finally allocated rooms that were next to each other at check-in. The hotel generally looks fairly new, and the room design pretty modern.
The hotel was happy to hold onto our luggage: you scan a QR-code, and submit the baggage declaration. Do note: the baggage was actually stored in the hotel lobby, but it looked reasonably secure and the hotel reception staff were about. What was a little disconcerting though was that the following morning at 5:50AM when we were self-checking out, we saw a couple of luggage bags still there but no staff was around [I’m assuming the lobby is only manned from certain hours in the morning.] Of course, if you’re not intending to leave your luggage overnight in the hotel, this is a non-issue. But still.
The room is tiny – no two ways to say it. The room had the double bed, a small work table, the bathroom, a small fridge, and barely space for anything else. There’s sufficient passage way past the door yep: but once we placed just one luggage case in the room, we’d have to squeeze past it to get to the door. It’s incredible how we managed to squeeze both our luggage cases into our room. We didn’t trust the kids with a luggage case in theirs!
The room did not offer air-conditioning in winter: only a heater operation. In fact, portable fans are available for loan at the hotel reception if you wish, but there was no need: we were able to slightly open the window for the cold winter air to enter in and cool the room.
The room had a huge FHD TV mounted on the wall: it looked like it was 55″ or so. The TV has several categories of shows, and maybe a dozen in each category. These are not broadcast from public TV channels, but streamed on-demand from a service provider. Take note: the TV has adult channels that are technically behind a paywall, but during our actual stay the paywall had been disabled. So, if you have kids and this sort of thing bothers you, then make sure you confiscate their room TV remote controller!
In all, and also considering the fairly modest rate we paid, we had no complaints about our stay. The room is small yep, but if you do not intend to spend a length of time in it, then I reckon APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae can be considered as an option if you need a Ueno hotel