Karasuma Kyoto Hotel

The hotel is good--very much like a standard business hotel. The staff is very friendly. The location is near the activities center of Kyoto--near Karasuma and Shijo "dori" (streets), about a third of a mile west of Karawamachi (sp?)--the epicencter of night-time activities in Kyoto--with lots of restaurants. There is upscale shopping on Shijo between Karasuma and Karawamachi streets. The hotel is adjacent to the N-S subway line Shijo station and not too far from bus stops on Shijo. (Note, there are a lot of busses on Shijo including several going to major tourist sites such as the Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion--but the stops for various busses are not all in the same location, so one needs to scout out where a particular bus stops. Further, the stops can be more than a block from the listed intersection--e.g, both east and west of Karasuma.)

I loved the location, right in front of south exit of the subway. Kyoto does not have much subway network so you might be wasting money to ride two stops from the subway, but the buses are just as terrible, because of the volume of the traffic. I would like the Kyoto station area but all the reasonably priced hotels were sold out. This hotel looks great at the lobby but you will be disappointed when you get to the room. I got a smoking room on 14th floor because they didn't have a non-smoking room for a bigger bed for two. We left the window open for three days and it still smelled strongly of smoke. And maybe because it's a smoking room, it was very dirty looking. But the bathroom was clean but very small. The biggest problem is that the mattress is really bad. I could not lay down on the side because my rib cage was feeling the spring in the mattress. After all day of walking around in Kyoto a good night sleep is necessary... Although all the shortcomings, I would still recommend this hotel simply because the lack of good priced hotels in Kyoto, and it's location.