We stayed for four nights at K’s House Kyoto in a standard twin room on the 6th floor of the main building. We booked our July 2017 stay in January 2017 for $279 total ($69.75/night).  Our stay was during Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri, so this price is likely higher than usual.

K’s House Kyoto is part of the larger K’s House brand, which has 12 hostels throughout Japan.  This particular location won Hostelworld.com’s Hoscar for best hostel in Japan & Asia 2013, so we had high expectations.

Location

We liked the location of K’s House Kyoto. It was a 10 minute walk from the Kyoto Train Station, a 15 minute walk from the main downtown area, and had plenty of budget food and drink options nearby. Despite this great location, it was also located in a quiet neighborhood which we found quaint and comfortable.

Room

Our room was a ‘standard twin room’, which contains bunk bed twin beds, a sofa bed, and a desk with a stool.

Note that the ‘standard twin room’ contains a sofa that can sleep a third person, while the ‘basic twin room’ does not contain a sofa.

Our room was surprisingly quiet despite being across from the bathroom. Surprisingly, our room walls and door were even able to block out a baby that was crying in a nearby room (we could only hear it in the hallway) as well as guests sitting in the hall talking at night.

The room was basic – and we had to make our own beds – but it was comfortable for us to settle into for four nights.

Bathroom

Our 10-room floor shared a bathroom. There were three sinks, three bathroom stalls (one male, one female, and one mixed), and two shower stalls in the bathroom, as well as one shower stall accessible from the hallway. Although the sink area frequently became messy, the bathroom stalls and shower stalls were always clean and well stocked.

The shower stalls had large containers of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. The sink area had communal hand towels, soap, and some towels for wiping up the counters (although no one seemed to use these). There was a blow dryer in the sink area, but it only output cold air.

Common Areas

We spent a good bit of time working in the 2nd floor communal lounge. There were three desk areas, two communal desk top computers, multiple couches, a traditional Japanese sitting area, and a book shelf in the common lounge. It was a comfortable, but sometimes loud, area to work.

There was also a kitchen accessible from one side of the common lounge. The kitchen had three large sinks, three ovens with electric hot plates, three refrigerators with freezers, a shelf for storage with labels, common spices, and plenty of pots, pans, plates, and utensils. It was a legit, complete kitchen.

There was also a laundry room accessible from the common lounge. There were three 300 yen washers (with powder included) and three free dryers. We used two of the washers and two of the dryers during our stay, and found their quality to be excellent (especially in terms of normal hostel/hotel washers and dryers).

There was also a roof-top patio on the 7th floor.  We didn’t venture up to the patio much since it was generally very hot during the day and the patio closed soon after sunset.

Shoe Boxes

Street shoes were not allowed inside the hostel. There were shoe lock boxes in the lobby, where you left your street shoes while in the hostel. You got a key during your stay for a specific lock-box.

Once depositing your shoes, you needed to wear slippers around the hostel. Katie found the slippers to be annoying because they caused her feet to become very hot and sweat, while JT ditched the slippers after finding it impossible to keep the slippers on while wearing socks.

Travellers’ Cafe

We visited the attached Travellers’ Cafe twice. Our first visit was for the 9pm to 10pm happy hour when draft beer and cocktails are all half price (280 yen). We didn’t think the cocktail was worth 280 yen (and definitely not worth the 560 yen full price) since it was such a small pour.

We visited again for the 500 yen ‘choose four items’ breakfast available from 8am to 11am. We found this to be a good value, and likely would have enjoyed it more than one morning if we had tried it before our last morning.

On both visits, we found the cafe staff to be friendly and talkative.