Hotel Forza Osaka Kitahama

Pretty good location : near two metro stations, a good amount of convenient stores and a coupe of nice cafés in the area. Rooms are somewhat spacious for Japanese 3* standards, however a bit noisy, one can hear the wind despite the windows being closed, and some constant noise from the equipment in the room, in addition to that the adjacent street sees a lot of activity during the night (Ambulances, Motorcycles, …) if you’re not a heavy sleeper this might disturb your stay. Room layout was quite interesting : a sink in the hallway, toilet in a separate small room, bathroom/shower in another room and the bed+TV in the main area. A layout that seemed odd at first but it ended up being a good optimization of space to allow two people to prepare for going out without stepping on each other toes. Service was disappointing, pretty much every interaction was met with an urgent need to get rid of the customer, as long as you are not here for a checkout -which is done by a machine- you feel like you’re disturbing the staff… maybe the language barrier didn’t help but even the simplest requests (getting a taxi, forwarding luggage…) were tedious. Rooms are done « on demand » , unless you specifically ask for it the only thing that is done is change of bathroom towels , which would be fine if some of the newly changed towels cleanliness was questionable (brown marks on a "clean" towel are quite visible). And after a couple of interactions with the staff it didn’t seem to be on par with the level of service expected. I wouldn’t recommend a stay here unless you’re in for 2-3 nights max and do not plan to request any service from the staff.

The best hotel I’ve stayed in, here in Japan and I’ve been coming to Japan for almost 15 years. The rooms have plenty of space (and I’m a big American guy) and the bathrooms are very nice. There is also enough desk space for me to work both of my telecommute jobs with two laptops and an extra monitor, simultaneously. The service staff sucks and seem like they are very fake “nice” but I can let that slide because the prices are reasonable, the rooms are very clean and there is more than enough space.