Accommodations

In EASIAM 2018, the local organizing committee do not provide an official hotel. Please kindly secure a room yourself.

Tokyo has a wide variety of accommodations, from cheap hotels to luxury ones. But whatever classes of hotels you hope to use, since Tokyo is a crowded city with many tourists, we strongly recommend that you secure a room as soon as possible if you hope to have it in a relatively moderate price. Most reservations can be cancelled without charge if you cancel it before some prescribed deadlines (consult the term of reservation when you make a reservation); thus even if you are still wondering whether you come or not, we recommend to reserve a room as soon as you read this.

You can simply use some sites including Booking.com. If you make a reservation early, it is very likely that you can find a single room in standard hotels for 7,000yen–10,000yen. Just before the conference, it would be difficult to find a room below 15,000yen.

Types of accommodations

Tokyo has a variety of accommodations.

Standard hotels

By “standard” we mean “hotels other than those mentioned below”; they are the hotels such that you find in many other countries.

Standard hotels vary from cheap ones around 5,000–6,000yen (a single room) to luxury hotels. Please consult any of the major reservation services such as booking.com, tripadvisor, and so on.

Ryokan/guesthouses

In tokyo, it is also possible to find the so-called “guesthouse” style accommodations, including youth hostels. They are popular also for foreign tourists, and now many guesthouses accept foreign tourists.

Ryokan is somewhat similar style of accommodation as guesthouse, but is more traditional style of accommodations in Japan; it often comes with Tatami floor (see, for example, Japanese style rooms in japan-guide.com). Today, we the Japanese do not often use them in business trip and rather prefer standard hotels, but they are popular rather for foreign tourists since there you can enjoy truly Japanese atmosphere. Ryokan varies from cheap ones to very luxury ones, and sharing a room in cheap Ryokan by several people might be a good idea to suppress your accommodation cost. See, for example, the following sites, which have information in English.

Capsule hotels

This is not what we see in other countries—this is a very peculiar accommodation style, where people take rest in a small “capsule”, which is as small as 1m x 2m x 1m or something like that: see Capsule hotel (Wikipedia). This was originally for short time stays, for example, after midnight just for waiting for the first train or so. But nowadays young Japanese people use as a cheap hotel, and even some foreign tourists prefer to stay there (at least one night) for an exotic experience.

Capsule hotels usually have some common areas including lounge, baths, and/or showers, and thus you do not have to be packed in a capsule all throughout your stay. You only go back there when you finally get sleep. The security is not high in capsules (no keys for entering there), but usually the hotels offer lockers where you can safely keep your belongings. (Still we recommend that you keep valuables with you.)

Several capsule hotels can be found in Ueno area. They can be found in the Cheap Hotels in Tokyo site above.

Hints to suppress accommodation fees

We understand and are afraid that fee for accommodation can be expensive in Tokyo, and that can be a barrier for some people, in particular, students. Below are some hints to make the necessary cost as low as possible.

  • Make your reservation as early as possible, which is the most important general rule for suppressing accommodation cost. Middle ranged ones (say, around 8,000yen — 10,000yen) are generally occupied first (typically some months before the dates, or even a half year before), and after that, the remaining options are to pay more (10,000yen–), or on the contrary very cheap guesthouses or capsule hotels.
  • In Japan, hotel room fees are set for each person, not by rooms as in the western countries. Still, if you share a twin room with your friend, it is likely that you can save some money. Consider to find an accompanying colleague and share a room with her/him.
  • Tokyo is a “dense” and “big” city. UTokyo locates in the heart of the Tokyo city, but if you go away to some suburb area (most suburb cities can be easily and conveniently accessed by metros and/or trains), it is likely that you can find a better hotel with more moderate prices. Study the train network (which is really dense!) and try to escape to the outer Tokyo area. Within one hour distance by train, generally speaking trains are quite frequent and you should find no difficulty in getting to the conference site (except for the heavy congestion in rush hours).