world travelers House Hikari

The owner was nice and the facilities are ok

The cleaning lady was a little rude so you don't feel welcome once you have to leave. It is far away from downtown, besides no JR line or Tokyo metro lines works, so JR pass or 1 day pass don't work here.

This place is clean, in order to sleep a couple of nights is quite acceptable. The staff speaks English, which is very nice.

Very cramped and humid room, almost all of our things were wet after 1 night.

The manager of the property, Kuni, was very helpful. He provided us with pictorial directions to the hostel from the nearest train station (necessary, as it's a little difficult to find otherwise). He received my delayed luggage for me when the airline delivered it (even though the airline - Aeroflot - delivered my luggage way earlier than they told us they would and I was actually out when it arrived). He provided laundry detergent and a washing machine to use for free (which was invaluable given I only had the clothes on my back - thanks, Aeroflot). He responds to messages promptly, his English is good, and he was kind enough to let us check in early. As for the facilities themselves - for a shared bathroom situation, it wasn't bad. The toilet and shower were in separate rooms and were shared between a maximum of 4 rooms (there is a shower and toilet on each floor, meaning you don't have to walk far to find one). There is also a sink at the end of each corridor, so you won't have to wait long to wash. There are cooking facilities on each floor (which we didn't use, but I noticed free oils and seasonings) and each room has self-controlled air conditioning.

If you have JR passes and plan to use them exclusively to get around Tokyo, this property won't suit you as you have to travel on a lot of non-JR trains to get here. In fact, the nearest subway station isn't even on the Tokyo city subway map, which meant I couldn't figure out how to get there until the JR representative at Narita airport looked up the route for me (for reference, you change at Aoto towards/to a subway station called Yotsugi station - and to get to Aoto from central Tokyo you'll need the Keisei main line from a station adjacent to Ueno station called Keisei-Ueno). We were surprised to find shared bathrooms (yes, it is mentioned in the main description of the property but not in the room descriptions, so we missed it - it might be worth adding 'shared bathroom' to the room descriptions). It also mentions wardrobes in the main description (our room had no wardrobe, but a few hangers on the door frame) and a garden (there is a small patch of green next to the property with space to hang your clothes to dry - we elected not to, however, as the drying rack is also above a pile of rubbish and right next to the front door). Speaking of the front door, it is operated via a PIN lock, so ensure you get the PIN before you arrive as Kuni is the only staff member and he is not always present. We didn't have the PIN, so we had to find a WiFi connection to message Kuni and ask for it when we arrived.