The Toyoko Inn in Namba (furitsutaiikukaikan nishi location)

[roadrunnertwice]

We just got on our train for Koyasan and the next stage of our trip, so it’s goodbye Osaka for now — we’ll be back before we leave, but only for maybe 12-15 hours.

For most of the time here, we were based in one of the Namba locations of a chain hotel called the Toyoko Inn. Now I know chain hotel recommendations are not the usual fare around here, but if you’re going somewhere where it’s practical to stay at a Toyoko Inn, you should definitely do it.

It was only like $70 a night, and imho they hit that mark by skimping on exactly the right stuff. Everything was slightly shabby, but shabby in a comfortable “this still works great, replacing it would be a dumb waste” mode, and it was all super clean. The room was small, but laid out in a totally non-boneheaded way. You can choose to have fewer cleaning days when you make your reservation (hallelujah). The shower has big pump dispensers of shampoo and soap instead of disposable bottles. And they serve a complementary Japanese breakfast in the lobby that’s super simple but really helpful for kicking the day off.

We usually use a hostel or an airbnb when we travel, because we loathe the hostile sterility of hotels — the new-everything-smell, the constant waiting-on, the over-cleaning, the general waste. But somehow, when Toyoko were deciding what to cheap out on, they managed to drop every Hotel Thing I dislike! Anyway, would totally stay there again.