Hi everyone
Just wanted to add something about JapanHotel.Net. I recently got stung for a no-show 100% penalty for a hotel booked through JHN. In my view, the website makes it very easy for a user to make the mistake, as I did, of not realising that a firm booking had been made and omitting to cancel it.
The main problem is that on JapanHotel.Net you cannot check availability of rooms. Does anyone know of any other booking site where you can't do that?
If you want to know if a particular hotel has available rooms via JHN, you have to first put in your credit card details and only then will they check and reserve for you.
Also, if you look up an individual hotel, you find what looks like a list of its facilities but is in fact a list of possible, not actual facilities. This could be misleading. Maybe it is meant to be misleading. See, for example,
RYOKAN TOUKAISOU - JapanHotel.net
So I'd say to any other traveller: if a booking service asks for your credit card details before they tell you whether the rooms you want are available, avoid it like the plague.
Book hotels yourself direct. I thoroughly recommend the three places we stayed in recently, both for their booking service and for their accommodation service:
In Asakusa, Tokyo: Sakura Hostel
In Kyoto: Kyoto Cheapest Inn
In Nara: Ryokan Matsumae.