JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku hotel review

If you’re looking for a convenient and comfortable hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo, I can thoroughly recommend the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel. I stayed here for 6 nights in November 2024, so read on to find out what to expect if you choose the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel for your base in Tokyo.

Like most people, sometimes when I’m choosing a place to stay, I’m looking for location, but other times comfort or value for money are more important. For my trip to Tokyo I wanted a combination of all three — somewhere easy to get to from the airport and close to great transport links, comfortable after the long flight from the UK and at a price that wouldn’t blow my budget.

After a lot of research, price comparisons and even a bit of spreadsheet action, I ended up picking the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel in Shinjuku, and I was delighted with my stay.

In this review of the JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku I’ll let you know what I liked about the hotel, the few things that weren’t so great, and give you the information you need to decide if it’s the right Tokyo hotel for you.

About the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel

The JR Kyushu Blossom hotel is a 4 star hotel in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. It’s a reasonably large hotel, with 238 rooms of various types, including twin, double and queen rooms, as well as a number of deluxe rooms with views. There’s a 24 hour reception desk and a restaurant downstairs serving a buffet breakfast; it turns into a Japanese restaurant for lunch and dinner. Rooms cost from around 27,000 yen per night (£140) but check your own dates for a accurate cost.

Perfect location in Shinjuku

One of the most important decisions for any trip to Tokyo is where to stay. Although Tokyo has amazing public transport, choosing the right location can make a huge difference to the amount of time you spend sightseeing rather than on trains. Shinjuku Station is one of the best-connected places in Tokyo, with 12 railway and metro lines all connecting at the world’s busiest railway station.

Why Shinjuku?

I’d originally planned to stay either in Asakusa or in Ginza, but we only had 4 full days in Tokyo and after I checked out how long it’d take to get to everywhere on my itinerary, I worked out that we’d save at least an hour a day by staying in Shinjuku instead.

If you’re at the planning stage for your Tokyo trip I really recommend doing the same thing – I made a spreadsheet with the itinerary for each day, and worked out the transport time and the number of changes it’d take to get to each place from all the hotels I’d been considering.

My partner and I are also both vegetarian, so I checked for food options near each hotel, and we were arriving from Narita airport, so I worked out the route from there to make sure we’d be able to manage it after the long flight from the UK.

You might have heard that Shinjuku station is difficult to navigate, and it can be confusing, but there are almost always signs for the South Gate, which is the closest one to the hotel. Come out of the south exit, turn right, left and right again, and you’re there. My fuzzy, jet-lagged brain managed it without any trouble at all, even straight off a 14 hour flight.

Isn’t Shinjuku noisy and unsafe?

The other wonderful thing about the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel’s location is its position in Shinjuku. You might have heard that Shinjuku is seedy, full of dubious bars and dodgy types, but the area to the south west of the station where the hotel is located isn’t anything like that.

Instead it’s on a very quiet side street, 10-15 minutes’ walk from the bars and bright lights of Kabukicho, Golden-Gai and Omoide Yokocho but feels a whole world away.

Things to do near the JR Kyushu Blossom hotel Shinjuku

Being in Shinjuku means there are lots of things to do within easy walking distance of the hotel:

• Godzilla head in Kabukicho, 17 minute walk
• Meiji Jingu, 16 minute walk to the first Torii gate
• Golden Gai, 17 minute walk
• Omoide Yokocho, 11 minute walk
• Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, 11 minute walk
• Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, 15 minute walk

We even walked all the way to Shibuya, passing through Harajuku, Takeshita Street, Yoyogi Park and Cat Street on the way.

Shops and restaurants near the hotel

At the JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku you’re in the middle of one of the busiest parts of the most-populated city in the world, with all kinds of shops and restaurants within a few minutes’ walk.

There’s a Lawson convenience store right next door, and a Family Mart and 7-Eleven at either end of the street. Shinjuku Station has several shopping malls and department stores around the edges. The all-important 24-hour Don Quijote is 8 minutes’ walk from the hotel, and there’s a huge, multi-building branch of Yodobashi Camera just 5 minutes away.

There’s a McDonalds on the corner and plenty of Japanese restaurants. We went to 800 Degrees Pizzeria on our first night which was an easy way to fill our bellies before finally collapsing into bed.

Rooms

My other main reason for choosing the JR Kyushu Blossom Hotel Shinjuku was that I was able to get a room with a good size bed and space to get out on both sides of the bed.

Hotel rooms in Tokyo do tend to be very small, and one of the first things to go is space to walk all the way around the bed. If you look at most standard double rooms in Tokyo in cheap to mid-priced hotels, one side will be up against a wall.

The JR Kyushu Blossom does have standard double rooms with a 140 cm-wide bed, where one side is up against the wall, but I chose a standard double (Queen) room, which had a 160 cm-wide bed, space on both sides and a little bedside cabinet with a plug socket for both of us.

The bed was really comfortable (beds in Tokyo hotels are often described in reviews as being hard) and while the room was still pretty small, the layout worked well and we weren’t tripping over each other.

The bathroom had a nice deep bathtub plus a Japanese style toilet with a heated seat and controls to play with. There were plenty of toiletries, including shampoo, conditioner, a razor, face wash and a comb, and you could pick up more toiletries like bath salts, face lotion and moisturiser from reception. The bathroom ceiling did feel a little low, but it wasn’t a problem.

The room was very quiet, with hardly any noise from our neighbours or the street below. Our room had a view of the ultra-modern Shinjuku Ruriko-in Byakurenge-do Buddhist temple.

Breakfast

The JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku hotel serves a western and Japanese breakfast. There was a good range of options, with bacon, sausages, omelettes, a salad bar and cereal, and coffee to wake me up.

We had breakfast included in our rate, so we we given a little green ticket for each day to hand in to the breakfast attendant. If you don’t have it included it costs 2,750 yen for adults and 1,650 yen for children.

Breakfast is served between 6:30 am and 10:30 am, with last orders at 10 am.

The restaurant

After breakfast finishes, the breakfast room turns into the Akasaka Umaya Shinjuku restaurant, serving Japanese dishes with a special focus on specialities from the Kyushu region.

I’m vegetarian and the restaurant didn’t have any options without meat or fish, but it does have good reviews on Google and Tabelog.

Facilities

The hotel has just about everything you could need for your stay, with the exception of a gym. There’s a coin-operated laundry on several floors, vending machines, ice machines and a place to store luggage. I didn’t try the laundry but reviews online have commented that the dryer isn’t as effective as it could be, so perhaps it’s best to avoid trying to dry heavy or bulky items of clothing. There’s also a small car park on site.

Getting to other parts of Tokyo

Being so close to Shinjuku station, it’s not surprising that it was easy for me to get everywhere in Tokyo that I wanted to go by public transport. I rarely even needed to change train or metro lines.

Here are some examples:

• Tokyo Station for the Shinkansen, 20 minutes
• Shibuya crossing, 14 minutes by Yamanote line train
• Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa, 34 minutes
• Gōtokuji Cat Temple, 32 minutes
• Teamlab Borderless, 30 minutes
• Akihabara Electric Town, 27 minutes
• Tokyo Disneyland, 1 hour
• Tokyo National Museum and Ueno Park, 41 minutes

Getting to the airport

It’s really easy to get to and from either of Tokyo’s two international airports.

Haneda Airport (HND) is around an hour from the hotel by public transport or 30 minutes to an hour (depending on traffic) using the limousine bus which stops around the corner from the hotel.

Narita Airport (NRT) is around 1 hour 45 minutes from the hotel by limousine bus, or you can do what I did and take the N’EX Narita Express train, which takes around 1 hour 30 minutes.

Summary: is staying at JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku hotel worth it for your Tokyo trip?

I really enjoyed my stay at the JR Kyushu Blossom Shinjuku hotel. It was so convenient for everywhere I wanted to go and for getting to and from Narita airport, but still felt incredibly peaceful and a retreat from the city.

I was worried that while the location was great, it might be too busy or overwhelming, but I didn’t find that at all. The area around the hotel had plenty of life but felt very safe.

The room was very comfortable with a lovely big bed, the service from everyone we met in the hotel was warm and friendly and the breakfast set me up for long days of exploring Tokyo. The room was a little more expensive than some of the other hotels I’d been considering, but the location made it really worth it.

I was really pleased with my choice of the JR Kyushu Blossom Hotel for my stay in Tokyo, and I thoroughly recommend it. If you like the sound of this hotel, why not check prices for your stay?