Hoteles Dormy Inn en Kōriyama

5/5. Our three man group, including my father, friend and myself, stayed in the corner room on the fourth floor from around September 24th-27th. We stayed in Japan for 20 days total, visiting Osaka, Kyoto, Hakone-en, Tokyo and eventually Kōriyama and then another place in Osaka. We stayed in four hotels and one B&B during that time, and this was by far my favourite place that we stayed at throughout the entire trip. The room easily fit the three of us and was the best value we got out of a hotel by leaps and bounds. This was a fantastic place to stay and unwind after Tokyo. The location is just a six minute walk from Kōriyama Station which is fairly central to a lot of places worth sightseeing, although Koriyama itself is pretty incredible, especially if you want to escape the heat and bustle of places like Tokyo or Osaka. The reason to come here is the raw value and what you get for staying here. The staff here are very gracious and patient. They have a public bath/spa with incredible facilities, including a sauna, cold bath, lay down pools, you name it. They seemed very relaxed about tattoos; two of the people had very large and hard to sleeve tattoos. Neither of them ended up using the spa, which is honestly their loss, but they seemed fine with having them in as long as they covered them with a towel. I’m pretty terrible at the Japanese language, so at first I assumed it would cost money to use the spa, however the (incredibly nice and helpful) lady working there insisted I could go in. What I ended up getting for free was an onsen experience that I paid ~$100 Canadian for previously. For free, to reiterate, and it’s open incredibly late, with complimentary probiotic drinks/ice-cream in the morning and night respectively. The entire second floor is a marvel. They have a place just off to the side of the spa where you can pour your own beer on tap for 300 yen which is also a large manga library. You can do your laundry in there as well, set it in and go for a back, come back and get an ice cream and chill. I honestly felt like a king. I’m almost certain they had free soba at a specific time too, but never got the chance to use it. There is a massage parlour on that floor as well where you can book your times in advance which my friend got to use, and by his own words it was well worth it. There are so many good things I could say about this place, but they also went above and beyond and blew my expectations of service out of the water. During one day of sightseeing one of our group left some souvenirs inside of a taxi as we were on our way back to the train station. By the time we got back to the hotel, the staff had already been contacted by the taxi company and arranged to have the souvenirs dropped off, which we picked up on the same day. I wish I knew enough of the language to ask for more details on what exactly happened, but this one interaction cemented in my mind just how incredibly nice and just plain good the people are in Japan, and