Where to Stay in Japan: Ryokan, Hotels, Capsules, Temples and Hostels

Business hotels are the backbone of Japanese travel: small rooms (9 to 15 square metres), spotless, with a unit bathroom, kettle, pyjamas, desk and blackout curtains, clustered around stations so you arrive by train and walk. Prices move with demand: a Toyoko Inn single that costs 7,500 yen in Fukuoka on a Tuesday can be 14,000 yen in Kyoto in November.

• Toyoko Inn: the cheapest of the big chains, 7,000 to 12,000 yen, always with a free Japanese and Western breakfast buffet. Rooms are identical nationwide, which is exactly the point.
• APA Hotel: everywhere in Tokyo and Osaka, 8,000 to 16,000 yen, famously compact rooms with large TVs; prices spike hard at weekends and events.
• Dormy Inn: worth paying 11,000 to 20,000 yen for because every branch has a top-floor onsen-style bath (often a rooftop open-air tub) and free late-night bowls of soba in the lobby.
• Super Hotel, Sotetsu Fresa Inn, Comfort Hotel, Richmond, Mitsui Garden, JR Inn: 9,000 to 18,000 yen, slightly bigger rooms, breakfast included or around 1,500 yen.

Western chains (Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott) run 30,000 to 80,000 yen in the big cities and the top end (Aman, Park Hyatt, Hoshinoya) starts around 100,000 yen. Twins cost 30 to 50 percent more than singles, not double, so two people pay 6,000 to 9,000 yen each in a business hotel. Check-in is 15:00, check-out 10:00 or 11:00, and bags can be left before and after for free.

A ryokan is a Japanese inn: tatami floors, shoji screens, a low table, futon laid out on the floor while you eat, a yukata robe you wear everywhere including to dinner, and baths fed by a hot spring in onsen towns. Prices are quoted per person and include dinner and breakfast. Expect 15,000 to 25,000 yen per person for a good family-run ryokan with shared baths, 25,000 to 50,000 yen for a well-known onsen ryokan, and 60,000 to 150,000 yen for the famous ones with private open-air baths in the room. Solo travellers pay a premium or are refused on busy nights because the price model assumes two.

Dinner is the point of the stay: kaiseki, eight to twelve small seasonal courses served in your room or a dining room at a fixed time, usually 18:00 to 19:30. Tell the ryokan if you will arrive after 18:00 or you may lose dinner. Breakfast (grilled fish, rice, miso soup, pickles, tofu) is at a fixed time too, usually 7:30 to 9:00. Check-in runs from 15:00 to around 18:00; the attendant shows you to your room, pours tea and explains bath times. Check-out is 10:00.

Baths are communal and gender-separated, often with hours when they switch. Wash thoroughly at the seated showers before getting in, keep your small towel out of the water (fold it on your head), tie up long hair, no swimsuits. Most onsen ryokan also have one or two kashikiri private baths you can reserve for 45 to 60 minutes, free or 2,000 to 4,000 yen, which solves the tattoo problem (more below).

Tattoos are still banned in many public onsen and sento because of their yakuza association, though the rule is loosening. Your options: a room with its own open-air bath, a kashikiri private bath, cover-up patches for small tattoos (sold at Don Quijote), or towns that have gone tattoo-friendly, including all seven public baths in Kinosaki, most of Beppu and Dogo Onsen Honkan. Ask when booking; “tattoo OK” is understood everywhere.

Etiquette: shoes off at the genkan entrance and into the slippers provided, slippers off again before stepping on tatami, separate toilet slippers that stay in the toilet. Wear the yukata left side over right (right over left is for the dead). Do not move the futon or the low table; staff lay out and clear bedding. If you cannot eat something (fish stock is in almost everything), say so when you book, not at the table. Keep voices low after 21:00 and do not tip.

Minshuku are the family-run version: simpler rooms, home cooking rather than kaiseki, shared bathrooms, 6,000 to 12,000 yen per person with meals. They are the best value on islands, in the Alps and along the Kumano Kodo and Nakasendo trails, where they are often the only option.

Choose one or two onsen nights and place them where they fit the route rather than making a detour. The classics:

Yufuin and Kurokawa in Kyushu, Ginzan in Yamagata and Nyuto in Akita are smaller and prettier but need a car or several buses. Dogo in Matsuyama is the oldest, with a bathhouse you can visit for 700 yen without staying.

About 50 of the 117 temples on Mount Koya take guests as shukubo. You sleep in a tatami room in the temple grounds, eat shojin ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine: sesame tofu, tempura vegetables, simmered yuba, no meat, fish, garlic or onion) at around 17:30, and join the monks’ morning service at 6:00 or 6:30, with a fire ritual at some temples. Rooms are 12,000 to 30,000 yen per person with two meals; the larger temples such as Ekoin, Fukuchi-in and Shojoshin-in have English-speaking staff, Wi-Fi and in some cases private bathrooms, and run night tours of the Okunoin cemetery. Book through the Koyasan Shukubo Association or on the big booking sites; they fill a month ahead in autumn and at weekends. Get there by Nankai train from Osaka Namba to Gokurakubashi and the cable car, about 2 hours.

Other temple stays exist at Zenko-ji in Nagano and along the Shikoku pilgrimage, but Koyasan is the one set up for visitors.

Capsule hotels have gone from salaryman refuge to design hotel. Nine Hours (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka, Narita airport) charges 4,000 to 7,000 yen for a pod, shower rooms and a locker; First Cabin sells larger “business class” cabins with a full-size bed for 5,000 to 9,000 yen. Many older capsule hotels are men only, and most make you leave during a cleaning window around 10:00 to 14:00. You get a locker, not a room, so travel light.

Hostels are excellent and quiet: dorm beds 3,500 to 5,000 yen, private doubles 8,000 to 12,000 yen, usually with a kitchen and a bar. Reliable chains include K’s House, Khaosan, Piece Hostel (Kyoto), Unplan and Wise Owl. Asakusa and Kuramae in Tokyo, Kyoto Station and Namba in Osaka have the biggest clusters.

Machiya are Kyoto’s wooden merchant townhouses, hundreds of which are now licensed holiday rentals with a courtyard garden, a cypress bath and a kitchen. They cost 25,000 to 60,000 yen a night and sleep two to six, so they beat two hotel rooms for families, and let you live in a residential lane in Higashiyama or Nishijin. Look for a licence number on the listing.

Airbnb and minpaku: since the 2018 Private Lodging Business Act, every short-term rental must display a licence number (starting with M or the prefecture code) and may only operate 180 nights a year unless it holds a full hotel or simple-lodging licence. Unlicensed listings were purged, so supply is thinner and pricier than in Europe; a licensed one-bedroom in Tokyo runs 15,000 to 30,000 yen. Hosts must copy a foreign guest’s passport, as hotels do.

Love hotels rent rooms by the hour for couples, and the overnight “stay” rate from about 22:00 (7,000 to 15,000 yen for two) buys a room far bigger than any business hotel, with a huge bath. No booking, cash at a machine, usually couples only; Shibuya’s Dogenzaka, Uguisudani and Osaka’s Umeda have the most.

Manga cafes (Kaikatsu Club, Manboo) sell 8- to 12-hour night packs for 1,500 to 3,000 yen: a private booth with a reclining chair or flat mat, free soft drinks and showers for about 300 yen. They are the answer when you miss the last train.

Tokyo: Shinjuku is the best all-round base: direct Narita Express, the Odakyu Romancecar to Hakone, the Yamanote line, and food and bars at every hour on the east side; the west side by the skyscrapers is quieter. Shibuya suits night owls and shoppers, with prices 20 percent higher. Tokyo Station and Marunouchi are the choice if you take several shinkansen trips or want quiet, upmarket nights. Asakusa has the cheapest beds in central Tokyo, Senso-ji on the doorstep and direct trains to both airports, but is 25 minutes from Shibuya. Ginza is for luxury hotels, department stores and an early start at Tsukiji.

Kyoto: Downtown around Shijo-Kawaramachi (Downtown Kyoto) is the best base: walking distance to Gion, Nishiki Market and Pontocho, Hankyu trains to Osaka, hundreds of restaurants. Gion and Higashiyama give you ryokan, machiya and lantern-lit lanes, and dead-quiet evenings; there are few cheap rooms. Around Kyoto Station you get the shinkansen, every bus line, the Haruka airport train and the big business hotel chains at 15 to 20 percent less, with a 15-minute ride to the sights.

Osaka: Namba puts you in Dotonbori’s neon, with the Nankai Rapi:t to Kansai airport in 38 minutes and the most nightlife. Umeda is the business-hotel and department-store hub around JR Osaka station, one stop from Shin-Osaka for the shinkansen and on the Hankyu line to Kyoto in 45 minutes. Osaka hotels are 20 to 40 percent cheaper than Kyoto’s for the same chain, which is why many people sleep in Osaka and day-trip to Kyoto in 30 minutes.

Booking.com and Agoda carry nearly everything, but two Japanese sites often have more rooms and lower rates for domestic chains and ryokan: Rakuten Travel and Jalan, both with English versions. For ryokan with meals, JTB’s Japanican lists meal plans clearly. Toyoko Inn, APA and Dormy Inn are usually cheapest direct, and many small ryokan only take bookings by email or phone and payment in cash at check-out.

Lead times: for cherry blossom (late March to early April), Golden Week (29 April to 5 May), Obon (around 13 to 16 August), autumn colour in Kyoto (mid to late November), New Year, the Sapporo Snow Festival in early February and Niseko from late December to February, book Kyoto and onsen ryokan three to six months ahead. Outside those weeks, two to four weeks ahead is fine for cities and a month for a popular ryokan. All accommodation must photocopy the passports of foreign guests without a Japanese address; it is the law, not a scam.

Luggage forwarding (takkyubin): hand your suitcase to any hotel front desk or convenience store before 11:00 and Yamato or Sagawa deliver it to your next hotel the following day for 2,000 to 3,000 yen (two days to Hokkaido, Kyushu or Okinawa). Airport counters at Narita, Haneda and Kansai send bags to your first hotel. It is how you do Hakone or Koyasan with an overnight bag and avoid the shinkansen oversized-luggage rule.

Online hotel prices usually exclude local accommodation tax, charged per person per night at check-in or check-out:

• Tokyo: 100 yen on rooms of 10,000 to 14,999 yen per person, 200 yen at 15,000 yen and above; under 10,000 yen is exempt. From 1 April 2027 this becomes 3 percent of the room rate on stays above 13,000 yen, and minpaku and capsule hotels become taxable too.
• Kyoto: since 1 March 2026 the city charges 200 yen on rooms under 6,000 yen, 400 yen from 6,000 to 19,999 yen, 1,000 yen from 20,000 to 49,999 yen, 4,000 yen from 50,000 to 99,999 yen and 10,000 yen on rooms of 100,000 yen or more per person per night, the highest in Japan.
• Osaka (whole prefecture): since September 2025, 200 yen from 5,000 to 14,999 yen, 400 yen from 15,000 to 19,999 yen, 500 yen at 20,000 yen and above.
• Kanazawa, Fukuoka and a growing list of other cities levy 100 to 500 yen.
• Bath tax (nyutozei): 150 yen per person per night at any inn with a hot spring, sometimes shown separately on a ryokan bill.

These are small next to room rates, but a family of four in a 25,000 yen per person Kyoto ryokan now pays 4,000 yen a night in tax on top. Typical room rates by tier:

Add 20 to 60 percent in cherry blossom and November weeks and over Golden Week, and expect Kyoto to be the most expensive city in the country in those periods.

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