Hotel East 21 Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan)

Members of staff are very friendly, courteous and efficient. Maybe a bit too ‘deferential' on occasions, but that's a characteristic. English is spoken, but not by everyone, so meal selections can be interesting.

The hotel is only a few minutes' walk from the bus and railway stations. Far from being surrounded by concrete blocks though, there are some lovely parks and botanical gardens to enjoy. The parks are home to a number of activities so, if you're lucky, you might catch a dance festival and an insight into Japanese culture.

Rooms are cleaned daily and are kept immaculate. The free shuttle is a useful tool, but it's worth taking note of the fairly rigid timetable in order to get best value.

It's unthinkable to pay the tariff in a hotel such as this and then be faced with additional costs for the pools and other facilities. These hotel features form part of the service and should be included in the cost. A very costly swim!

The immediate area is very short on good restaurants. Plenty of fast food places, but you can find those anywhere. There's nothing of a Japanese flavour, apart from one Sushi restaurant. Things don't improve the next day with the hotel breakfast. They see it as another opportunity to pile on the extra costs. Difficult to digest, these not so little extras.

Taxis are expensive and on the day of departure, you can be faced with a taxi journey into the city centre, back again to collect the luggage and then the trek to the airport. Tiring and costly. The hotel is pretty good about extending access time to the room, though.