April 11-15, 2025: We stayed at this nice little Airbnb for four nights. I feel like I’m ready to show off this ‘listing’ with the amount of pics in this post, I’d say Airbnb could learn a lesson or two, but if I remember correctly, their listing for this property had even more pictures displayed! The cost worked out to around $2,700.00 CAD for four nights, and since there were five of us, it worked out to just over $500 CAD each. In case you were wondering! We all had our own room, so I thought it worked out well!
This home in the Yodogawa Ward that my four traveling companions and myself stayed at has six levels including the garage and rooftop, and it sleeps 10! The garage (pictured above) could fit one small car or maybe two if one was in front of the other. And I would not want to be backing out, access to this garage went directly onto a sidewalk and busy main street!
There were extremely narrow stairwells with steep stairs going to each floor, and narrow halls to each room as well. Lots of natural light though!
There were five bedrooms with two beds in each! Single beds and close to the floor which was totally ok with me. Each room also had its own heater/air conditioner unit installed above the windows so I thank the gods that I was able to have heat while my buddies could have their AC when they wanted!
The bathroom on my floor was narrow to move around in. The toilet had its own room, separate from the shower. The shower had its moments of difficulty when maneuvering about, and I’m not a large human. Someone over 6 feet would probably have had more ‘fun’ with this!
The kitchen area was nice and clean looking. Full of all the essentials too, except for one notable thing missing… THE COFFEE MACHINE! Good thing I brought my little brewer that I’ve been packing around with me on all my more recent trips. That little guy has got some mileage!
So there were two microwaves, a rice cooker, a kettle, and I want to say the fridge as well, all plugged into this one tiny power bar, and I’m no expert on voltages especially in different countries, but this was a bit concerning to me. And in Japan the plugs only have two prongs, no third grounding prong. The humidifier and air purifier (if that’s what they were), were also in a power bar along with other living room electronics. Just about every outlet in the living room, kitchen, and dining room were in use… Aside from our bedrooms (one for each of us), the five of us had nowhere to plug in our devices!
So, we unplugged everything except one microwave, the fridge, and TV, ha! That’s all we used anyway. I’m not gonna lie… None of us used the stove or cooked a single thing during our stay, aside from heating up things in the microwave from the nearby 7-Eleven! The 7-Eleven actually had some nice things, like microwaveable TV dinner style meals (but fresher than what I’m used to finding at the grocery stores back home,) with rice and veggies on one side of the dish, and meat on the other.
Had to plug in my coffee machine to the power bar because the cord would not reach the outlet down below! And I bought a bag of coffee from the 7-Eleven which was practically next door to our lovely home. Gotta try the local stuff, yes? It was OK tasting! 😛
The living room was nice and bright. Had to turn on the heat at night because it did get cold in there, even for the guys! Didn’t pay much attention to the TV. No English on any channel although there were some subtitles! Side note, I forgot to turn around and snag a pic of the dining room table, oh well!
The main floor bathroom was definitely larger than the one on my floor, and it had a washer/dryer combo machine that we all planned to use on our last day in Osaka. Waiting until the last day was a big mistake! We couldn’t figure out how to use the darned thing properly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a washer/dryer combo until now. Washing was fine but getting the machine to dry was impossible, haha!
There were washing and drying instructions on top of the machine all in Japanese, and while the Google Translate app did come in very handy during our entire stay in Japan, it did not help us much with drying clothes in this thing. English translation yes, but which cycle to choose or for how long or with which other options, not so much! No matter what setting we chose, the machine would wash but not dry. It would run the dry cycle (or so we thought), but everything was still sopping wet after literal hours of attempts. Three of us (myself included) ran out of time and had to lug our suitcases with soaking wet clothes all the way back to Tokyo. Gross. Good thing we weren’t getting on a plane ‘cuz those bags were heavy. Rawwwr!
The rooftop was a fun floor! Nice that they had robes and slides for us to slip into before venturing outside. And a ‘lil sauna! Never used it but still, neat! The sun was shining most mornings and I sat out there with my coffee waiting for everyone else to get up! It was beautiful and warm!
All said and done, this was a nice place to stay. It was clean and bright and there was hot water. It was close to amenities like the 7-Eleven where we spent a lot of time (ha), grocery store, and the transit station that took us into the Osaka sights and sounds. It was a 25 minute walk back to the bullet train which we did when we left because it was so nice outside. ‘Fun’ times hauling our luggage on the streets though!
4.5 out of 5 five stars, only due to lack of coffee machine (I could be biased here) and dry clothes. To be fair, I’m sure the dryer was user error! Or was it…? 😛
