The Rise Osaka Kitashinchi

Awesome!

The location isn't bad, and the room size is standard for Japan. However, they don't clean the room; they only change the towels and fold the pajamas they provide without changing them. Unmade beds, everything uncleaned, and overflowing trash cans. This is the first hotel I've ever stayed in with such poor room service. Furthermore, the staff is neither very friendly nor helpful when it comes to answering questions at check-in.

I booked the « Japanese Style Room » that seemed slightly bigger on paper than a semi double (13m² vs 11m²) With one suitcase and one carry on, the room felt tiny, very hard to go in and out the room or the bathroom by leaving the suitcase near the entrance and there is no space elsewhere to put it. I think this room is more suited for business travelers who have a carry on size and maybe a backpack, the 13m² here felt lower than an 11m² in an APA hotel. That said, the room was clean, except the luggage storage issue it has a nice bed on the floor, a ‘couch’ next to the bed to replace the usual desk - which is not the most convient for business travelers who might prefer a desk but I enjoyed browsing my tablet on it- The staff at the desk was absolutely fantastic, most of them speak good English they took my backpack before checking in and sent my luggage to my next hotel at the end of my stay without any issue. The cleaning system is however very disturbing, like other hotels they do apply the eco cleaning, meaning they make the room only every 3 days but they do change towels, the pajamas and provide basic amenities every day, except that unlike other hotels I have been to, they do not just hang a bag outside your room with the towel change in it, the staff enters your room and changes the items every day. Now that wouldn’t be an issue if one stay 2-3 days in Osaka and would be out early morning every day, but as someone who takes their morning to plan the rest of the day i had to take into account the cleaning team « visit » every morning … it might not be a big deal for everyone but it was very annoying for me to have to include a morning visit in my schedule, I ended up putting the « do no disturb » sign on my door for the duration of my stay , which meant no change of towels for 3 days. Another annoying «eco» decision is that the hotel decided to not provide water bottles, instead they give you a refillable bottle that you have to go out all the way to the elevator to refill. Except that the bottle they give you doesn’t fit in the fridge, and the water from the distributor is warm, so if you want cold water you also need to go down all the way to the third floor to get some ice, wait for the ice to cool down the water, then drink, good luck if you wake up thirsty in the middle of the night. Again, not a big deal if you prefer room temperature water but I ended up going outside buying from the distributor across the street. Oh and the fridge is so tiny, it can’t hold all bottle sizes, and I’m not talking about big 1L ones, even 600ml doesn’t fit. The hotel does however provide free coffee and tea and the lobby, with a set of extra amenities. They also offer to sell their pajamas - which i heavily considered looking and how comfortable the pants were- but after checking out the price I decided I’d be better buying twice or thrice as much clothing from any store outside. The hotel is 6-8 minutes away from Yodayabashi Station and Kita-Shinchi but after a couple of days I realized that most of my itineraries where going through Umeda and Osaka stations, which are 12-15 minutes away depending on how much luggage you’re carrying. So I won’t say that this hotel is particularly close to public transport because 13 minutes on average add up quite a bit, so make sure to check which station you will be using the most during your stay for your visits. The neighborhood was surprisingly calm, I was afraid it would be noisy at night looking at the amount of clubs/bars in the vicinity but I had very calm nights, you might be woken up by a lady yelling in the street selling bentos during lunch time but you shouldn’t be spending your time in Japan sleeping right ? Overall the experience was average, a good hotel but very annoying decisions made by the management that might be better suited for locals on a business trip than for tourists, I could overlook the room details by getting a different type but the water and the cleaning systems were annoying and ended up adding unnecessary inconveniences.