Mimaru is a local apartment-style hotel chain in Japan that specializes in catering to families and friends travelling together. In fact, the hotel name, Mimaru, derives from the Japanese words “minna” and “tomaru”, which means “everyone to stay”.
The chain features clean and spacious accommodations that can accommodate families of all sizes. There are properties in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, and all are conveniently located within walking distance of subway stations.
In 2021, they also opened several all-suite properties in Tokyo and Kyoto that offer two or more bedroom apartments. Some properties have special rooms, like Pokémon- or ninja-themed rooms.
We recently stayed at the Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East location, a highly rated property built in 2019, and found it met all our needs and those of the other five families travelling with us.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Booking
The hotel offers a variety of accommodation options. Between the six families in our group who each had two or three children, we got to sample a few different apartment styles.
Usually when booking a hotel room in Japan, we’re limited to one or two options because not many rooms can accommodate families of four or more; however, this isn’t the case with Mimaru. The chain offers a myriad of eight options that can accommodate a total of up to eight guests.
I made my booking through Hotels.com using the Rakuten shopping portal to earn some extra cash back. I like Hotels.com Rewards and use it to book any hotels that don’t have their own loyalty program.
(Unfortunately, it looks like Hotels.com Rewards will be seriously devalued at some point in 2023, so be sure to make use of it in its current format while you still can).
We booked a Premium Deluxe Japanese Apartment, only because I thought having a Japanese-themed room with a tatami mat to sleep on would be neat for the kids to experience. It’s one of the larger but more expensive options, and can accommodate a family of up to eight.
When we booked back in July 2022, it was $325 (CAD) per night plus taxes. It’s worth noting that current rates are over $500 (CAD) per night plus taxes.
Some of my friends booked slightly smaller and cheaper rooms, like the Loft Bed Theatre Apartment, for $275 (CAD) before taxes. This room is now over $350 (CAD) a night plus taxes.
Another family booked the Pokémon-themed room for $400 (CAD) before taxes, but now is currently over $450 (CAD) plus taxes per night.
I paid for my booking with my HSBC World Elite Mastercard and redeemed my HSBC Rewards points to offset the cost of the booking. I cashed my points out for travel credits at a rate 200 HSBC Rewards = $1.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Location
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East is located in the district of Ginza, in the Chuo ward of Tokyo. Ginza is famous for its shopping, dining, and entertainment.
It’s conveniently just a seven-minute walk from Kyobashi Station on the Ginza Line. From here, you can catch a 20-minute subway ride to Shibuya Station.
For local eats, you can walk 15 minutes to the Tsukiji Outer Market, which has a variety of fresh seafood options and local eats including Kitsuneya, a famous beef stew place.
Within a 15-minute walk, you’ll also find popular Japanese department stores including Uniqlo, Loft, Itoya, and Muji. The Pokémon store is also close by for the kids.
Directly across from the hotel is a small grocery market where you can purchase fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and other items to cook your own meals at your apartment.
Within a five-minute walk you can also find a Ministop, 7-Eleven, or Lawson convenience store.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Check-in
The apartment hotel is a smaller building nestled in a quieter neighborhood. The main entrance is off a small side street.
Check-in starts at 3pm. We arrived at 4:30pm, and our room was ready with our luggage already in the room. We had shipped our luggage from our previous hotel in Osaka the day prior.
The lobby is a small space with a seating area in the corner and a small check-in desk.
The desk is usually manned by two staff from 7am–10pm daily, with one who is fully fluent in English. We found the staff to be very courteous.
All of the hotel’s details and facilities were explained to us with the help of a smart screen on the check-in counter, which displayed all the information visually in English.
Amenities such as toothbrushes, sleeping gowns, slippers, other toiletry items, coffee, and tea are available at a self-service station in the lobby, between the check-in desk and the elevator. There are even slippers and toothbrushes for kids.
You can help yourself to the amenities as you wish, with the exception of facial products by Sekkisei, which must be requested from the front desk.
The building has nine floors, eight of which house accommodations, with several rooms on each floor. Key cards are required to enter the building between 10pm and 7am, and are required at all times to enter the elevator.
Check-out is at 11am, but you can pay an extra ¥5,000 ($50 CAD) for a late check-out of 1pm.
After checking in, we picked up our amenities and headed to the elevator and up to our room.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Premium Deluxe Japanese Apartment
As mentioned earlier, all rooms can accommodate up to six or eight guests in total and are non-smoking. The apartment sizes range from 409 to over 670 square feet.
Let’s start with a detailed review of my apartment, and then I’ll give a brief overview of the other rooms booked by our friends, as the amenities in all the rooms are similar.
Our apartment was Room 205, and the last room down a short outdoor corridor out of the elevator.
Upon opening the door, the room appeared a bit dark for the middle of the afternoon. There were two sets of larger windows in the room, but being on the second floor, we weren’t getting much sunlight coming through.
Rather than having drapes and curtains, the windows feature sliding shojis. They’re effective in maintaining privacy while allowing some sunlight through.
The room was decorated in darker colours, which also added to the darkness of the room, with dark blue and grey walls, brown carpeting, and black wooden furnishings.
At the room entrance is a key card switch that controls the electricity in the room. It doesn’t have to be your actual keycard to turn on the switch – any similar sized and shaped card will do. Fortunately, the lighting adequately brightened up the room.
To the left of the entrance is a closet rack with plenty of hangers and also an extra-large umbrella, which was big enough to cover a couple of adults or an adult and two children.
If you require more umbrellas for a rainy day, smaller ones are available to use right by the hotel’s main entrance.
To the right of the entrance is a small kitchenette, with a microwave, stovetop, oven, sink, and full-size refrigerator with a freezer. On the countertop was a kettle and a toaster oven.
In the cupboards and drawers were cutlery, plates, bowls, cups, mugs, a ladle, scissors, corkscrew, cutting board, and various pots and pans. Paper towels, dish soap and a sponge, and saran wrap were also provided.
Some specialty cookware, games, and other gadgets are available to borrow from a large shelf in the lobby. Some of these items included a coffee maker, French press, wine glasses, a rice cooker, a waffle maker, Jenga, and a pack of cards, among other things.
There were two twin beds, a twin bunk bed, and two twin futons to accommodate up to six adults and two children aged six and under. The beds were quite comfortable with thick comforters.
The headboard for the two twin beds had a built-in panel between them that features USB ports, outlets, and switches to control lighting on the headboard. The wooden side panelling of the upper and lower bunk beds had a similar panel, but no outlet.
The twin futons with extra bedding were in a closet, and came with instructions on the closet door on how to set them up on the tatami mats. The tatami mats came set up with a small coffee table and seating pads around it.
In addition to this seating arrangement, there was a long table with banquette seating and stools around it, that could easily seat eight people to share a take-out or home-cooked meal.
On one end of the table was a hutch with a large flat-screen TV and a smartphone that can be used to make local calls or to contact the front desk.
One thing I appreciated were the rounded corners on all the furniture, a great safety feature for those with young children. The only furniture with a square corner was the kitchenette counter, which had a corner protector placed on it.
The bathroom has a vanity with double sinks that was separated from the wet room by a frosted glass door. The vanity has several cups, a hair dryer, and was well supplied with towels.
A wet room is a Japanese-style bathroom in which the shower and tub are in the same room, so the entire room gets wet. Both the tub and shower area featured non-slip flooring, and a switch on the wall by the bathtub allowed for lighting adjustments.
Mimaru uses its own branded toiletries that are supplied in large multi-use bottles.
The toilet isn’t located in the main bathroom area, but rather in a separate room. Here, you’ll find a tiny sink and smart toilet with a heated seat, amongst other functions.
The only thing I found lacking in the room was dedicated space to put our luggage and adequate drawer space to unpack our luggage. We ended up laying out our open luggage on the floor and tatami mats.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Pokémon Room
Much to the envy of my kids, my friend had booked the Pokémon Room for his family. It could accommodate up to four adults and two children aged six and under.
The room came with two twin beds placed together, a twin bunk bed, and two cushioned kitchen benches that could be converted into smaller beds if needed.
Like our apartment, this one also had a dining set and a kitchenette. The toilet was placed in the bathroom in this room.
The décor was of a lighter and brighter tone, with grey carpeting and light oak-coloured furniture, and Pokémon motifs all around. The biggest feature was a large Snorlax on the bed.
At check-in, guests staying in this room are also presented with a small Pokémon novelty bag containing a Pikachu sticker, a Snorlax luggage tag, and a Pokémon shopping bag.
Not all properties have the Pokémon-themed rooms, so be sure to check check the website to see which Mimaru properties do.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Loft Bed Theatre Apartment
A couple of my friends booked this cute apartment. Once again, like the Pokémon room, the décor was lighter and brighter, which I actually appreciated more so than our darker décor.
This particular room could also accommodate up to four adults and two children aged six and under, with a total of four twin beds and two cushioned kitchen benches. There’s also a small desk in addition to the dining set and kitchenette.
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East – Other Facilities
There’s no restaurant at this property, however, restaurants, grocery stores, and convenience stores are close by. For the most part, we opted to go out to cafés and the market for breakfast, but also enjoyed a couple of take-out meals on a couple of late nights out.
There is a vending machine for cold and hot drinks, located in the laundry room.
The on-site laundry facility was a big bonus for my family. We were more than a week into our trip when we arrived in Tokyo, so we had a bit of laundry to do. Inside, there are three washing machines and three dryers.
Washing costs ¥400 ($4 CAD) per load, which includes detergent that is automatically dispensed when you start the machine. The cost to dry is time-dependent, and charged at ¥100 ($1 CAD) for every 30 minutes.
We found it required usually two or three 30-minute cycles to dry the clothes. There is a change machine in the room, too, in case you don’t have the right coins.
If you want to save some money, you can partly dry clothes in your own apartment which has a hanging drying rack, but this will take much longer.
There is a large washroom on the main floor beside the laundry room, which is convenient for kids who need that one last bathroom break before heading out.
Housekeeping services vary depending on your length of stay. Everyday, trash is collected, towels are swapped out, and toilet paper is refilled. On the fourth and seventh days, they’ll also make the beds and vacuum the room.
If you’d like a full clean, which includes cleaning the bathroom and toilet, you can request this at the front desk.
Conclusion
Mimaru Tokyo Ginza East is a great accommodation option for families and friends travelling in Japan. It doesn’t have all the services and amenities you may find at a full-service hotel, but it has all you need for a safe, comfortable, and kid-friendly stay, and a variety of apartment types to choose from.
The Tokyo Ginza East location is ideally situated to hop on the subway, do some shopping, or visit the Tsukiji Outer Market for some local and fresh eats. We also appreciated its close proximity to grocery and convenience stores, and having an onsite laundry facility.
The Pokémon room was also a huge hit for the kids.
I would have no hesitation staying at this property again, or another Mimaru property when we visit Japan again.
