OK, so Ron got lucky finding a hotel so quick in Hong Kong. But Japan was a different story in a lot of ways. The biggest difference is clearly the language barrier. The hotel web sites are all in Japanese.
Our first stop in Japan will be Tokyo. But we will be staying in Yokohama. This city is the second largest in all of Japan and is located just south-west of Tokyo. It is a harbor city, with a new Minato Mirai (Harbor of the Future) area of attractions on the coast. We chose Yokohama because my friend Kenji lives there. It is also considerably less expensive than downtown Tokyo. And with Japan’s ultra-efficient and always-running transportation system, it would be no problem to take a 20-minute ride into Tokyo. In fact, a certain transportation-centric person would probably enjoy it. So I began my research.
Kenji suggested the Royal Park Hotel in Yokohama. Neither Ron nor I had ever heard of it. But Google searches to the rescue! Luckily every hotel I have looked at in Japan has had a web site available for it. Of course, the primary web site is always in Japanese unless it is an American-owned company. But the technology-savvy Japanese hotel companies have wisely created sub-sites or pages that cater to the English speaking visitor. The Royal Park Yokohama was no exception. What I discovered about the Royal Park Yokohama was quite interesting.
It turns-out that the Royal Park Yokohama is inside the Landmark Tower building. It is the tallest building in Japan. It is shown in the photo at right. Mount Fuji is in the background. The hotel’s rooms are on floors 50-67 of this monolithic building.
After looking through the English section of the Royal Park Hotel I had investigated all the options available to us. But inevitably the Japanese site seems to present a lot more information and options. Using a useful Translation Plug-in for Firefox called gTranslate I was able to make my way through the Japanese site pretty easily. To my horror I discovered that the Japanese room rates appeared to be substantially cheaper than those presented on the English pages. How could this be?
After some close scrutiny I realized what the difference was. The Japanese are used to having a 10% service charge added to hotel rates. You see, people don’t normally tip in Japan. So that service charge is in lieu of tipping. (In theory.) Once I worked through the entire Japanese check-out process the rates ultimately came out to be nearly identical. In some cases it was in the English reservation’s favor. I booked us a nice corner room at the Royal Park Yokohama for the first part of our stay in Japan.
Get the RSS Feed