About M104 Kagoshima
M104 Kagoshima is a stand-alone guest house located near Kagoshima’s Ferry Port and downtown Kagoshima. The lobby is located on the second floor, with a common area on the third floor, dormitories on the third and fourth floors, private rooms on floors 5 and 6, and tatami rooms on the highest (7th) floor.
M104 Kagoshima is an older hotel, and it shows. It seems like half of the things in the building aren’t working or are outright broken and have not been replaced, including lights, air conditioning units, and even furniture. The desk light for my bed, for example, did not work at all. The hotel is also a bit dark and dingy due to age, a general lack of maintenance and poor lighting conditions. That being said, it was very clean and we did not hear anyone (friend’s snoring in the same room excluded).
Additionally, the sealings were often bare, exposing poorly insulated piping, concrete ceilings, and similar things typically found in the inside of the walls and ceilings.
Location
Kagoshima is Kyushu’s southernmost city. Famous for nearby Sakurajima, it is also a major ferry port for getting to the numerous islands off the south coast. Several ferries also connect to various locations in Okinawa Prefecture as well.
Like most of southern Kyushu, Kagoshima is tropical, and both the lifestyle and nature reflect this fact. The plants especially are noticeably different from other islands, and in Kagoshima there are a lot more tropical plants (e.g. palm trees, Japanese figs, etc.) than even other parts of Kyushu. The weather is also warmer and wetter.
M104 Kagoshima sits near Kagoshima Ferry Port (regular ferries to Sakurajima, Yakushima, and other islands off the southern coast of Kyushu, including eventually Okinawa) and downtown Kagoshima, which features a lot of shopping, a European-esque style atmosphere of pedestrian streets, trams and gothic-esque artchitecture.
Kagoshima also sits at the end of the Kyushu Shinkansen (which starts in Fukuoka), so it is easy to get to without a car. From here, public transport (local trains, buses) is available to take you to other parts of the prefecture and Kyushu.
Gallery
About the room
I was travelling with 2 friends (so 3 in total) and there were no options for a non-dormitory room, so we decided to do two reservations: a single room and a double room. I stayed in the double room.
The private rooms were set up in the style of Japanese business hotels; the double room had obviously been converted from two of these by simply knocking out a section of wall between the two rooms. The only changes that had been made (it seems) is that the bathroom area in one had been converted to be a large toilet/bathroom (i.e. the shower was removed) and in the other half, the toilet had been removed to create a vanity area with large mirror and built-in lighting unit.
Sounds great, but there were also some drawbacks. Half of the lights in the room did not work, there was exposed piping that was hidden with a thin curtain, and while the water pressure was good, the temperature sometimes fluctuated wildly – independent of the time of day when showering.
The good
Here is what they said on Booking.com:
M104 is an older hostel/hotel near Kagoshima Port. We stayed in a double room one night to catch the early ferry the following day. The location was excellent for that. Our room had a code (rather than a key), and it was easy to get to.
The bad
Here is what they said on Booking.com:
I don’t think it is M104’s fault (it could be Booking’s, or something went wrong with the API). Still, because they were doing self-check-in that day, we were supposed to get an email with the information (written on a sign at a reception in Japanese), but we never received it, so we had to use the phone to call the main office.
Apart from that, the beds in this room were extremely old and uncomfortable, although another friend in a single room said his was fine. There were several broken or things not working in the rooms and common spaces, pipes were exposed in many rooms, and the shower temperature fluctuated wildly both at night and in the morning.
Response to my review
Here is what the owners had to say:
(They have not responded yet)
What I did while there
Verdict
While I did not have a good night here, I will stay here again when I come back from Yakushima on the ferry. Hopefully my experience will be better then! I will update this article with any new information then (end of October).
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