Agora Place Hotel

What we love…

• Small, efficient, and perfectly organized is how we would describe the Agora Place Hotel in Tokyo. If you're use to Texas sized hotels with tons of room to spare, you may have to look else where. Agora Place is tiny sure, but that's how Tokyo rolls, super small spaces that are designed to work. Rooms here make the most of the space available by ensuring everything does double duty. TV's and lamps are mounted on the walls, outlets are mounted on headboards, the mini-fridge is stacked on top of the safe and both are situated inside the closet, so as not to take up any extra room space. The bathrooms (although almost painfully small) are outfitted with luxury electric toilets that have seat warmers and bidets, so you can forgive the lack of elbow room.
• The concept behind Agora Place is "style MY stay", which simply put means the hotel has come up with a way for you to create a hotel visit that's unique to your needs. The prices at Agora Place are kept low by keeping the rooms themselves streamlined and simple, and although there aren't a lot of bells and whistles in each room, there's an easy way for you to get the little extras you want, at a tiny price. When you enter the lobby at Agora Place you'll be greeted with colorful throw pillows stacked on shelves, coffee machines, iPad docks, hair straighteners and cotton pajamas displayed about as if you're in a designer home goods store. This "store" is actually the hotel shop, the place where you can buy or rent a number of different items to help style your stay the way you want. These items not only include luxuries like iPod docks and coffee machines, you'll also find shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, razors, and a number of basic items one may have forgotten, or chose not to pack. Pretty much all of the items at the hotel shop are reasonable priced at around ¥100-500 (about 1-5 USD). This might not seem like that big of a deal now, but just imagine how nice it will be to rent that electric foot massager after a full day of walking around Tokyo, or how fantastic it will be to rent a cell phone charger when you find that you forgot yours at home. There;s also coin laundry on premises and you can purchase detergent at the hotel shop—we don't need to get into how awesome this feature is if you travel frequently because you already know how sweet it is to be able to do your laundry mid-trip.
• If you're nerdy like us you'll be happy to hear that Agora Place also has free WiFi, so you'll be able to catch up on your tweets every night.
• Agora Place Hotel is located in the Asakusa neighborhood a residential area with plenty of authentic Japanese flavor, and a little old world charm. You'll find a number of kitchen supply shops just a few minutes from the hotel where you can score great sushi plates, sake cups, ramen bowls, and chop sticks at really low prices. The Sensō-ji Temple is just a 10 minute walk away, and the surrounding neighborhood has great local eats at local prices, (read: not inflated for tourists). Try Nihonkai Asakusa a lovely local sushi bar and restaurants with warm people and great staff. If you're in need of a coffee in the morning walk just past the subway station on Kokusai-dori street and visit the Mister Donut, where a coffee will cost about half the price of Starbucks (and you can get a doughnut to boot).Tawaramachi Station (on the Ginza line) is just outside, literally a 1 minute walk from the hotel. From the Tawaramachi subway station you can easily navigate to all of Tokyo's other neighborhoods.
• Agora Place is also pet-friendly (only on certain floors) so those of you who don't want to leave home without fluffy, Agora Place is the hotel for you.