[Columbine]

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Hotel: K's House Hostel
Location: Kyoto
Overall Score: 8.5/10
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Score
Location: 8/10 - Shichijo, Kyoto, a few minutes walk either way to Kyoto eki or Keihan line Shichijo.
Staff Language Proficiency: 8/10 - Bilingual Japanese and English mostly.
Cleanliness:7/10 - New(ish) facilities, well maintained, but it is a hostel so people may be untidy in the shared dorms or kitchen.
Price: 8/10, it's a hostel and prices range from 2300 (dorms)-3500 (single private) pp.pn, so quite reasonable.

Overall Comment
There's a cafe attached that serves breakfast if you're not up to self-catering and a useful bike hire service. Staff are very friendly and provide a lot of tourist information right there in the lobby, as well as selling useful things like padlocks if you lose or forget to bring one for the dorm. Internet and skype headsets available 100y/hour.

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Hotel: Sakura Hostel, Asakusa
Location: Asakusa, Tokyo.
Overall Score: 6/10
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Score
Location: 6/10 - Somewhat hard to find as hidden down the backstreets (head past the neon love hotel to find it), but very close to Asakusa temple and train lines.
Staff Language Proficiency: 7/10 - Most well-capable of speaking english.
Cleanliness:6/10 - Acceptable levels of cleanliness, although the showers and beds are a bit old.
Price: 6/10, Mix of rooms available with dorms starting at aprox 3000yen, and private rooms ranging from twins for 8000yen to 8 beds for 23000 yen. A bit on the pricey side for what you get, but then, this is Tokyo.

Overall Comment: Looking at the website, they may have renovated, but it's the only place I have ever stayed where the dorm ceilings were padded with grey rubber. Beds were old and you had to go outside along a veranda to get to the showers and toilets from the dorms. A lot of breeze-block walls and outside looked straight into other people's apartments. Basically ugly but serviceable. Staff were unmemorable, so neither criticism or praise there. The shared showers were irksome as there was nowhere very dry or secure to put things, but it was clean. Lockers are small, but the place in general is quite safe.