Getting A Complete Breakfast At Toyoko Inn

All Toyoko Inn hotels in Japan provide free breakfast for their guests. Most branches that we went to previously offered Japanese breakfasts which consisted of onigiri (rice balls), miso soup and assorted array of pickles apart from green tea and coffee. There are exception to this. At Toyoko Inn Nanba guests were served freshly baked bread for breakfasts. For us, we love the Japanese breakfast!

For our personal experience, having stayed at more than half a dozen Toyoko Inn chain around Japan, this particular branch offers the most delicious array of breakfast. And that's why my tummy is getting rounder and rounder each day we are in Japan. I ate too much for breakfast because breakfast was such a feast!

Coffee machine in the dining hall, offering black coffee, American coffee and espresso. Coffee is available for guests to enjoy all day long. So far, this branch had the most coffee offered at the coffee machine. Previously at other Toyoko Inns, it usually was a pot of coffee made available at the lobby area.

One side of the dining area. The biggest dining area of all Toyoko Inn chain we've stayed in. But during the public holiday period, this area was so packed that guests were allowed to bring up their food tray to their respective room to enjoy their breakfast. After the public holiday (Sep 25 onwards) breakfast time was much quieter.Onigiri (rice balls), rice in rice cooker, furikake, pickles, miso soup and tea to choose from this table. Pretty generous with the buffet selection what with the Japanese breakfast of rice and miso soup but also bread with toaster available. The pantry ladies who were responsible for the delicious breakfasts were very efficient replenishing everything too.

We really, really ate well there.Bread with margarine and strawberry jam selection. Also available here are some Japanese style veges, salad and sausages with ketchup and mustard available.

Raimie enjoying breakfastRaimie's big breakfast on our first morning there. Pickles were a must for him and Zaini.

Our breakfasts on subsequent days while we were staying at the hotel. The ones with pickles were Zaini's and the ones with bread was mine.
I ate plenty of gobo while in Tokyo! Coffee, bread, onigiri, hot rice and miso soup. Hot tea for Zaini and orange juice for Raimie. What more could I want for a breakfast?

Our Room At Toyoko Inn

Rooms at Toyoko Inn are pretty standard, so you get pretty much the same at any branch anywhere in Japan. Sometimes, uniformity is nice especially when when trying out new places and you didn't want any unwanted surprises at the hotel you booked for your vacation.

Our room. Each room in any Toyoko Inn come with pyjamas for guests. No cupboard here, so luggages need to be stored under the bed. Some Toyoko Inn branches do have cupboards in their room. The biggest one we had so far was in Hakata Eki-mae.

Standard size small TV, an empty mini fridge and a table. Certain branch has a humidifier in the room, small round table suitable to enjoy your food and a cupboard in the room.

Complimentary tea - green tea and plum tea. For me, I just make full use of the coffee machine at the lobby. If the branch didn't have coffee available at the lobby, there will be complimentary drip-on coffee sachets in the room.

No cupboard, just a place to hang our clothes. Having no cupboard did make the room look a lot bigger though.

Bathroom and the amenities provided. As you can you see in the photo, both the sink tap and the shower/bath tap shared the same pipe. I guess it help to save some space. The bathroom is small. But we love the deep bath tub here. It was very nice to soak in hot water with your body fully immersed in the water while you sit upright in it. Trust me.

We initially thought to stay here for a few nights and after coming back from Taenoyu Onsen, we had already booked rooms at Toyoko Inn Asakusa Komagata which we are more familiar with, having stayed there a few times before. But we managed to change our reservation and made this branch our base the whole time we were in Tokyo instead. The reason in the next post.

In the mean time, check out some of the rooms at other Toyoko Inn we've stayed in here.

Making Toyoko Inn Asakusa Our Base While In Tokyo

Almost all our hotel stays while vacationing in Japan will be at one of Toyoko Inn Hotel chain. They have a hotel almost everywhere in Japan! Not to mention cheap too. A double room at Toyoko Inn costs us less than 10,000yen. That and with free breakfast thrown in, makes the hotel our choice, every time.

Toyoko Inn is essentially a business hotel offering cheap, no frills facilities for weary salaryman. With the low price, come a condition. You have to be out of your room by 10.00am and are only allowed to enter your room after 4.00pm (3.00pm if you are a member of the Toyoko Inn Club. And you get 30% discounts for stays on Sundays and public holidays too, but that's another story which I will elaborate later) because during that time, all rooms are opened up for cleaning.

We don't have a problem with not being able to enter our room during the day because we'll be much too busy sightseeing anyway. But for those needing a rest and returning to their rooms early, Toyoko Inn might not be a good choice. I read many complaints from US/European tourists about this arrangement in several travel forums, but you got what you pay for! I have yet found another hotel chain that offers a room for less than 10,000yen a night for the three of us that offers us a private, clean room (as opposed to staying in hostels) with our own bathroom, free breakfast, free internet access, free gifts upon check-in and so much more.

Rooms are very clean. Front desk staff are always efficient, even if they might not understand English, but most have at least a staff who are able to assist non-Japanese speaking guests (like us!) Hotel entrance. Compared to other Toyoko Inn branches, this hotel have a big lobby.

Free gift for guests after check-in procedure completed. So far, we got plenty of socks, padlocks and notepads for our free gifts. Cool! By the time you are reading this, Zaini has more than a week's worth of socks to bring back home. Shows how many nights we had spent at Toyoko Inn.

They give out a ladies set too for lady guests. The ladies set may contain cotton bud, hair band, onsen salt, shampoo and conditioner and even facial cleanser, which you can request on subsequent days you stayed in too. What it contains, I found differ from hotel to hotel.(Or was it due to the year and time we check-in?) This time, I even got a slimming gel! @_@

The lobby area. There were vending machines, coffee machine, ice machine and water available for guests. Need to pay for your drinks from the vending machine of course, but the rest are free for all. There was iced mugi-cha (barley tea) served in the evening too here for guests to enjoy. There are also two computers with internet access and a printer for guests to use free of charge. If you need a laptop to use in the comfort of your room, you can rent one for a mere 1,000yen a day. Also available at the lobby are phones that you can use free of charge for local calls but please limit your calls at 3 minutes. My blogging friends in Tokyo were used to me calling them in a 3-minute period by now.
Also available are coin laundry machine, dryer and detergent vending machine too. We need this facility as we came to Japan with just 3 t-shirts each and a pair of jeans that we wore. We need to do our laundry every 3rd or 4th day of our vacation.

Next up, photos of our small but comfortable room.

p.s.There are more than one Toyoko Inn branch in Asakusa. I'm respecting Zaini's wish to not mention in which Toyoko Inn in Asakusa we stayed in because Zaini doesn't want this branch to be too well-known for our own selfish reason. Hahaha

A Picnic Of Sorts - Having An Ekiben At Tazawako Station

And a time to enjoy Akita Komachi premium rice. Akita Komachi means Beauty of Akita and is both a reference to the fair ladies for which the region is known for, as well as its famed local rice.

The original roots of Akita Komachi derive from a well-known brand-Koshi-Hikari; as one of the highest quality of Japanese rice. Akita is one of the best suitable places for the rice fields in Japan and produces the highest quality choice rice in all over Japan, with fertile soils, pure fresh water fountain headed to its abundant forests. The rice's sticky texture stays the same when the rice gets cold. Of course this is great for onigiri (rice ball), sushi, or bento.

We took the Akita Shinkansen Komachi train, which was an all-reserved train from Ueno to Tazawako for our overnight trip to Taenoyu Onsen using our JR East Pass for the trip. This trip is fully covered using JR East Pass and Japan Rail Pass.

Leaving from Ueno quite early in the morning, we decided against buying any ekiben at Ueno Station or in the train and was hoping to check out the ekibens sold at the station's shops.

Our ekiben for the day. Limited choice for things to eat at Tazawako station, but this ekiben was a good one for us. Do note that the dumpling in this ekiben has chicken in it, for those avoiding to eat any meat.
We had lunch at the park just outside Tazawako Station, while waiting for our 1.13pm (or was it 1.17pm?) bus to Tazawakohan (Tazawako Lake). Look how interested Raimie was, checking his ekiben.

Appreciating Japan Through The Ekibens

This will be one of many posts on ekiben. We not only love to ride the trains in Japan, we love to indulge ourselves to the ekiben that were offered at each station we stopped by or bought inside the trains itself. Last year's trip to Japan was a gastronomic affair of ekibens for us as we traveled from Kyushu to Tokyo, stopping in between for not only sight-seeing but for the ekibens too. I didn't write posts about the specific ekiben that we ate in each region, traveling upward last year, so I thought I might just do it this time around.

Unfortunately this time, there weren't many opportunities for us to try out different region choice of packed lunch because we were limited by our JR East Pass to travel in just 3 days. We bought a 3-day JR East pass for a promotional fare at only 10,000yen per person to travel on JR East trains. It was a bargain!

The word ekiben comes from "eki-uri bento," or "lunch-box sold at train stations". Ekiben (boxed lunches or lunch-boxes) are widely popular for their local flavors that feature many different kinds of specialties found only in respective regions of the country. Some of these ekibens decorative boxes and even earthenware that can be re-used later. We kept some of the boxes and brought them back too.

It is also important to note that the ekibens purchased at railway stations are completely safe for consumption because Japan's rules and regulations are extremely stringent. All the contents are clearly written and a sticker with information on the exact time when usold lunches/dinners will be collected and discarded! I read a news about a minor scandal involving sale of expired bentos some years ago. I guess that's why we never saw any ekiben or bentos sold at hugely discounted price because it is near to its expiry period!

While there were plenty of choices of ekibens to choose from; both at the train stations and in the trains, both Zaini and I had somewhat limited choice because as Muslims, we do need (in our case here, try as best as we can) to avoid meat products that were not slaughtered in the Islamic way and of course, Pork. However, the staff selling these ekibens were helpful enough to answer all my questions about the ingredients of the items they were selling. Nobody rolled eyes at us for asking too many questions. And we try to be considerate by not asking questions about the ingredients when there were other customers there even if that meant eating lunch way after 2.00pm when there were lesser crowd (or buying ahead).

Enjoying A Bowl Of Oden At Home

We've been back from our vacation in Japan less than 1 week and still missing the good food there. One of the food that we set out to eat in Japan was oden and there will be one post about us venturing to the back alleys of Asakusa to find oden. And no, we didn't buy the oden at a konbini.

We decided to have an oden meal at home during the weekend because both Zaini and I do like to eat oden.

Oden soup mix bought at Jusco.

Some stuff to put into the pot. Nothing much because this was my first try cooking oden at home. We got a daikon, chikuwa, eggs, atsuage and some other deep fried stuff.

Everything simmering away in a pot. Pretty soon, our house were filled with the smell of oden. No worries, we love the smell.

Time to eat!

A friend asked me whether oden would be similar to yong tau foo. I guess in some ways but unlike yong tau foo where we blanched the food items in hot water just in a few minutes, items for oden are simmered quite long. Any other thoughts on oden from those in Japan?

A Japanese Feast - Breakfast At Taenoyu Onsen

If at 5.00am the hall and baths were pretty deserted but by 6.00am, the staff were already up and about. Despite them being busy sending trays and trays of food to the two dining halls for breakfast, they didn't make any noise at all. I on the other hand felt like I was a baby elephant with my heavy footsteps. The day before, we had already set 7.30am for our breakfast. Knowing that we came by bus and train (shinkansen) the staff checked on whether the timing would be OK for us.

Last night's dinner was at the lounge so for breakfast we got to eat in the Japanese dining room. I came in wearing just my yukata. A bad idea if you can't stand sitting with your legs folded under. Can't sit cross-legged because I'll be revealing too much!

Raimie was given a small table on his own, seen here holding a piece of nori.

Me, in my yukata

We ate almost all the things served, including the natto. We didn't inform before hand that we wanted to avoid certain meat dishes for breakfast (we took it for granted there weren't going to be any for breakfast) but there were some bacon ready to be grilled included in our breakfast that we were suppose to crack an egg over it. We declined to eat that and the staff quickly extinguish the burner. Not seen in the photo are the rice and miso soup.

Everything was great and both Zaini and I both agree that the natto served here was way way better than the ones we ate previously (in Japan and Malaysia). Before our breakfast ended, Raimie was given some grapes. Smaller grapes than what Raimie had before in Tokyo. A bit different in taste but still absolutely yummy!

And we were asked whether we would like some coffee. I just love the coffee cup and the presentation.Not to mention the wooden spoon.

The staff remarked that we ate our breakfast far too quickly. LOL No time to sit around unfortunately. We need to pack up and wait for our bus!

Talking about bus, when you check-out, a staff will send you until you enter your car and wave you goodbye until you were out of sight. Then, she will bow deeply for a few seconds and wish you well. We witnessed this because the mother and daughter whom I wrote about in earlier post checked-out before us. A staff would have waited for us while we waited for our bus, but that would put too much strain for her (by having to converse with us) and for us too. Sensing that we like to be left alone, she went inside but quickly came out when the bus approached the ryokan. She waved us goodbye and off we went back to the city with a heavy heart.

It was definitely a great experience, and we are looking forward to such experience again in future. Even if it meant that we need for fork out a pretty sum to pay for a night's stay (for our standard, that is)! Actually, a night's stay here cost just a bit more than what we would've paid at Nikko Ginza (and at Nikko, we didn't get any dinner or breakfast).