The famous festival in Asakusa is “Sanja-Matsuri” – Three Shrines Festival. This festival is the biggest festival in Tokyo, all residents in Asakusa rush into the portable shrine which goes around Asakusa town! – It is originally scheduled in May, but due to COVOD 19, it was postponed to October, and it was still unclear whether this festival is really held or not… But Asakusa people decided to hold this festival, with portable shrine running on the truck! This portable shrine ran in front of our hotel, please see the video link below.
Let me introduce a good cafe in Asakusa – Cafe Michikusa. This cafe is located near this hotel, and famous for delicious pancake. Today I went there and ordered omelet rice and cutlet, enjoyed good atmosphere with beer, felt good!
Manager of this hotel has his routine work like management, reservation control, cleaning of this hotel. But I also have an ambition to contribute to creating better environment of foreign workers in Japan. As a result, I worked as producer of logo and website design of “Japan Platform for Migrant Workers towards Responsible and Inclusive Society”. Please have a look and have interest in this problem, thanks!
8 Minutes walk from our hotel, there is a restaurant of “baked rice ball with a wing” which is recently interviewed by many TV programs. We regard “baked rice ball” as a rice ball with soy sauce and baked, but this restaurant develops variety of tastes of this baked rice ball, and spread edge of this rice ball like a wing, testes like a baked rice cake. I tried this baked rice ball, very yummy! Following pictures are 4 of the variety, “Oyster sauce with butter and lemon” “Angel” “Macrophyll and small dried sardines with baked soybean taste” “Cheese risotto”. All of these are super yummy. Only 4 seats there when you want to eat in, but you can drink alkanol at night. Please visit here when you stay in our hotel!
Oct 4th is 23rd anniversary of owner couples’ marriage. This hotel is basically operated by owner only – reservation management, cleaning, washing, bed making, homepage update, finance & accounting etc. But this kind of one person operation generates various mistakes. Owner’s wife helps me a lot – although she has another job in daily life, she somehow creates time to help me to clean up rooms, equip amenities in rooms. I can somehow manage this hotel with my wife’s support. To show my gratitude to my wife, I invited my wife to Shisui Premium Outlet on Marriage Anniversary Day.
I wanted to buy some gift to my wife, but on the contrary my wife bought me a room wear to me! So sorry for this, so on the next day I finally had a lunch in Daiikokuya Tempura of Asakusa and treated her. This tempura is so yummy!!! Please try this tempura when you come to Asakusa.
10 minutes walk from our hotel, we can arrive at Ichiran Asakusa Rokku Ramen restaurant. Many guests waited for so long time to enter this ramen store before COVID-19, but now you do not have to wait, so this is a great chance for Ichiran ramen lovers. Ichiran is a very famous ramen brand in Hakata – Fukuoka, we see so many franchises in Hakata, especially Nakasu store is 24 hours open, we can enjoy ramen for breakfast. Ichiran ramen is a real Hakata pork bone (tonkotsu) ramen. Ichiran Asakusa Rokku has a souvenir corner with good Japanese culture taste, good to share via Instgram.
A lot of guests stay in this hotel, but still there are available rooms, so we offer available rooms for rental meeting room. Many of the users of rental meeting room are repeaters, they use this room alone for online interview / ZOOM meeting. This hotel has only 4 rooms so guests can enjoy high speed wifi, also can enjoy quiet environment, so very good for online meeting. But there are variety of usages of this rental meeting room. Yesterday a whole day fortune telling event was held, we worked like a reception of fortune telling room. Most customers of this fortune telling event are young ladies, make Asakusa town more fashionable. Today an online therapy class is held. Teacher seems to be in Thailand now, students are attending online therapy class in our room. Some guests use our room for maajang game. The table of the room can be used as a maajang desk, guests can enjoy maajang with no other guests so no need fear COVID-19 infected by others. Sometimes this room is used for girls’ party with cooking, sometimes used for YouTube shooting. Variety of usages, interesting. If you think of an interesting usage of this hotel, please contact Tetsuro!
Hello! I am Tetsuro, owner of HOTEL LITTLE BIRD OKU-ASAKUSA. 10 months passed since I opened this hotel, during this time I welcomed many guests although suffering from COVID-19 pandemic, and I also come to remind old memories related with this hotel. So hereby I start this blog. In this blog I want to introduce stories we create with guests in this hotel, what Tetsuro has been thinking, etc.
For this first time, I want to introduce an episode which was posted on my personal Facebook and got a lot of likes.
A 72 years old woman who just came back from France stayed in our hotel for 2 weeks for self quarantine. She checked out several days ago. Our hotel has no elevator, just stairs, so I felt sorry to ask this old woman to use stairs everyday, but finally we experienced a wonderful 14 days. This guest was born in Fukushima prefecture, and she made a pickled cucumber made in Fukushima, saying “I couldn’t get this kind of cucumber when I was in France”, and she shared a piece of this pickled cucumber to me. Very fresh cucumber with sesame – it was too yummy. She sometimes shared rice with me, and I shared Dorayaki ( a famous Japanese cake) which is made by Kameju, Asakusa in return. She also showed pictures of her grandson in France – so cute! She always says “No I will go out” to me when she walks around Asakusa, and when she returns to hotel, she always says “Now I come back” to me. We were really like a family when she was staying in our hotel. But the day has come – she checks out. She waved hands to me, says goodbye. I really missed her after she checked out. No matter what nationality the guest is, I always feel long staying guests like my family, but the guest must be apart as we are only hotel owner and guest. For this joy, and also for this grief, I will run this hotel with sincerity.
