Master Guide
Eighteen hotels across four categories
Written from public sources and revised by hand. No prices, no ratings, nothing sold.
Each entry says what a house is, how its building and shared rooms are arranged, and what is worth confirming before a stay. Nothing here is ranked or scored, and no entry stands in for a booking page. Where a house belongs to a chain, the entry names the single address it describes.
The four categories
Six to start with
Six houses from across the four categories, one line each.
A hotel floor set above a working department store, with its own entrance.
An old wooden house and a low new wing on either side of one garden.
Huts with a stove, no power, and everything else shared outdoors.
Pavilions from a world exposition, joined and re-clad above the river.
A working ferry terminal below, a club and a few hotel rooms above.
Ship-style cabins near the harbour front, priced and fitted by grade.
Full index
All eighteen entries, grouped by section.
Art Hotels
Casino Hotels
How this guide is written
Sources
Entries are written from material published by the houses themselves, from maps, and from press and reference coverage. Where a claim could not be confirmed, it was cut rather than softened. The month of the last read appears in every entry.
What is not here
There are no prices, no star grades, no scores, no reviews and no booking links. Nothing on this site is paid for or placed by a hotel, and no entry is ordered by preference. Sections are listed in a fixed order.
Corrections
Errors are corrected in place, and the entry is read again against its sources before the change is published. If something here is wrong or out of date, write in. The longer version of the process is set out in the editorial method.