Best TV: Villa Fontaine Jimbocho.

I will comment on the hotels on our recent trip. I reserved 3 different hotels on www.Hotels.com in advance. You have to pay in advance, although the refund conditions appear to by quite reasonable. The process went perfectly smoothly.

Here is where we stayed. Although there was no grandeur, we were very happy with all three:

• Tokyo: Villa Fontaine Jimbocho – C$109/night including taxes and breakfast –  Near Jinbocho Station. Good central location. Small room but clean adequate hotel. Boring breakfast but I’m not complaining. No wifi in hotel. Lots of TV channels including BBC (albeit dubbed in Japanese, with an English ticker along the bottom), lots of educational channels, shopping, etc.

• Kyoto: Hearton Hotel – C$117/night including taxes and breakfast. Near the intersection station of the 2 subway lines. Good central location. Decent size room. Clean and comfortable hotel, variety of food for breakfast; optional set Japanese breakfast. Wifi in lobby areas.
  

  Best breakfast (Japanese shown): Hearton Hotel, Kyoto

• Tokyo:  Nishitetsu Inn Nihonbashi‏ – C$117/night including taxes and breakfast. Clean and comfortable as well. Wifi in lobby, although it wasn’t working our first day there. This is the place that had a foot massager in the room!

A comment or two four:

• Wifi is hard to find, but may be available in hotel lobbies. Wired internet is available in most hotel rooms.
• Lobby computers tend to be in Japanese.
• Someone will speak a bit of English most places, but there is not as much fluency as you might expect.
• It is a challenge to navigate using street signs and maps, but it can be done!
  

  Only view and foot massager: Nishitetsu Inn, Nihonbashi‏ – Tokyo