The hotel has seen better days. The room smelled of cigarettes, even though it was no smoking, the pale pink carpet was stained, and the whole place is dumpy. But it's in a great location and how much time do you spend in the room? The furnishings were fine. The staff are helpful and nice, we kept our luggage there awhile after we checked out. I didn't like leaving my key there each time we left, but it did mean I never lost my key. There are restaurants, men and womens baths, but I didn't use any of that. You get toiletries, robes, slippers, the usual. The bed and pillows are super firm. You get helpful instructions regarding the use of the AC, which was greatly appreciated. The staff speaks reasonable English and are quite friendly. You can borrow tour books, read the paper, hang out in the lobby. No wifi but you can borrow a LAN cable free.

The minibar comes loaded so avoid it, or take stufff out and put it back when you leave. There's a market about two blocks down for fruit, drinks, but we found the take out food was awful, I think it was called "Fresca" or something like that.

The location is great. You can get an all day subway pass (represented by the green and orange dots on the map you get) for about 600 yen, we found it worth it, and could get to most of the places we wanted to go with it. The hotel is at the Gojo Nishinotoin station, one stop up from Kyoto station, and exit #2 is on the same side of the street as the hotel, make sure you leave by this exist, as the hotel is then about 2 blocks away straight ahead. Look for the tall building with the green roof. You can walk to the hotel from Kyoto station, it's about 20 min. To walk, leave the station on the Kyoto Tower side (big white and red tower), cross the street and go straight for about a mile. You'll pass a big temple on your left (go back and visit later, it's impressive and free, opens around 6am, great for those who aren't on Japan time and are up at the crack of dawn), keep going, then turn left on Karasuma Gojo, a really big street, you can't miss it, and the hotel is about 4 blocks down on your right. Or you can take the subway from Kyoto Station, see directions above, but there are limited elevators and escalators, you will be lugging your stuff up and down stairs.

If you have limited time, I recommend making the eastern part of Kyoto a priority Take the subway to Higashiyama Sanjo and be prepared to do a lot of walking. It's beautiful and worth the trek to see Maruyama Park, Chionin Temple, and the older part of Kyoto. We also saw Nijo Castle, easily reached by the Nijojo-mae line; wear socks, you'll be taking your shoes off to walk the castle. And if you don't read Japanese, consider skipping the Manga museum, it's impressive but more of a manga library and if you can't read it you can't enjoy it much.

Anyway, that's a lot of non-hotel info, but stuff that would have been helpful for us, especially knowing how to get to the hotel and what subway stops to take. I'd stay at the hotel again, but only for location and value, not because it's a super nice place.

The Aranvert was not the fanciest hotel I have ever stayed in, but it was just what we needed for a five-day home base in Kyoto - clean, friendly, and in a great location. The room was smallish, basically what you would expect in Japan and the room, as well as the hotel decor in general, could use a bit of updating. But the staff and the service were great. They provided lots of information, easy to read maps and even some guide books to check out. It is definitely skewed to western tourists and a lot of tour groups seem to stop there. A great bonus for us was laundry facilities, on a two week trip that was very welcome.

Missing it...quiet, clean and nice.. nice rooms, toilets even the toiletries..Their liquid soap is good! :-)

Requested a double room but they only had twins available on arrival. Room was small but adequet and clean. Breakfast was OK but not that much choice if you're not a big fan of Japanese breakfasts. There are vending machines in the lobby which are good as you don't have to pay mini bar prices for drinks and beer! Also there's a Coco Curry House just up the main street which is ace :)