I got to know about the Villa Fontaine chain of hotels through the Tripadvisor forum, so thank you for providing travellers good advice and tips!

I was not sure which one of the Villa Fontaine hotels I should pick for our family of 4 and consulted some Tripadvisor members and Japanese friends. We settled for the Niohombashi one and were not disappointed. Nihombashi is a very established area - a nice mix of office buildings and amenities. It's quite an upscale area but if you walk into those small lanes, you will find good restaurants at reasonable price. The train station closest to the hotel is Mitsukoshi Mae (which in Japanese means, in front of Mitsukoshi department store). You can find all sorts of food at the supermarket at the basement of this dept store. There is a Starbucks nearby, several convenience stores and some very old Japanese household names for traditional Japanese food and handicrafts. It's a distrcit full of character.

The hotel chain works hard on keeping its hotels "fresh-looking". The Nihombashi one has got an annex with new, modern design (please refer to the attached photos). Even the older wing was fully booked at the time we checked in.

The hotel is however quite difficult to find if you are not equipped with a street map. By the time we got back to Tokyo city area (we were in Kyoto, Nara, Nikko and Tokyo Disneyland prior to that), we were too exhausted and forgot to print out a map on the hotel's website. People we approached (I speak some Japanese) were not familiar with the hotel chain. I finally called the hotel reception and she managed to direct me to the hotel. It's actually located in a narrow backstreet in between two conenience stores - the 7-Eleven and the SunKus store. If you come out of the Mitsukoshi exit and look across the street, you will see the Starbucks, walk over and turn right, following the train track and with the Nihombashi (it means Japan Bridge on your right). When you see the 7-Eleven, walk in and you will see the hotel at the end of that narrow street with a turquoise neon light sign (it's in katagana though, so it doesn't say "Villa Fontaine", when you make a booking, be sure to print out the hotel name in Japanese characters for ease of reference). Once you locate it, you will be able to find your way back after sightseeing, without any trouble. You can also drop by the convenience store to get some drinks and snack before you head back to your room.

Actually, the Shiodome one is in an excellent location but it's a lot more pricey. There is one at Mita which is also brand new but no Tripadvisor member has prior experience with it. In addition, the new locations don't offer weekend rates. Other locations offer rooms at a much lower rate (almost half-price) and it applies on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays as well as Mondays. For the Nihombashi hotel, we paid merely 8,160 yen per room per night with breakfast for two included (fresh bakery, eggs, some coleslow and coffee/tea). This is really hard to beat, considering that we are talking about Tokyo here.

Laundry service is available, there is also a eatery across the street that stays open till midnight.

The only issue for us is that the room does not have a wardrobe. It has a rack with a good number of hangers right next to the entrance of the room. You can consider that a small walk-in closet. It is that way because this hotel has Japanese businessmen as its major clients. They normal come alone and stay for 2 to 3 nights only. In our case, we has two rooms so it acutally still works for those with children.

We made our booking a little late so we didn't get to stay in a twin room. The double room is smaller but I got a glimpse of the twin room which seems more spacious.

The bathroom, when compared to the room itself, is spacious and very clean. It's also very quiet in the room.

The staff were very courteous but some spoke very little English. Tourist information, airport limousine schedules, etc are however prominently displayed at the location. You are free to take a copy for reference. It's a five-minute cab ride from the hotel to TCAT where you can catch the airport limousine. It takes out only 1 hour 10 minutes to reach the airport, pretty fast by Tokyo standards, right?

All in all, this has been a nice surprise and the next time we visit Tokyo, we will choose this location.

Highly recommended!!