Where to stay in Saitama

Three kinds of nightWhere to stay in Saitama

The choice is really about what kind of night you want. A hot-spring inn feeds you twice and stops you moving. A city hotel is the right answer if you are arriving late or leaving early.

A ryokan or hot-spring inn旅館・温泉宿

Dinner and breakfast brought to you, a bath, and floor bedding laid out while you eat. The price is per person and includes both meals.

Includes 2 meals Book ahead

See ryokan and onsen inns › How an onsen works

A city hotelホテル

Clean, small, reliable and priced per room. Right for early trains, late arrivals and anyone travelling with a large suitcase.

Per roomNear the station

See hotels in Saitama › Getting around

A guesthouse or minshuku民宿・ゲストハウス

Family-run, cheaper, and often the only option in the countryside.

Ask about cashRural areas

See guesthouses and minshuku ›

Our first choice in Saitama is named below.

Looking for a room in Saitama tonight?

MAP How an onsen works

BookingSix things worth asking before you pay

Ask about these

Meals: Whether dinner and breakfast are included, and what time dinner is served. Inns often serve at a fixed time and will not wait
Tattoos: Ask whether the bath admits them, and ask about a private bath
Private bath: Kashikiri. Many inns have one, and it removes the question of bathing with strangers entirely
Payment: Card or cash. Rural inns are often cash only
Arrival time: Tell them. Inns lock up earlier than hotels
Luggage: They will hold it before check-in and after check-out. Just ask

What a night at an inn is like

Shoes: Off at the entrance. Slippers inside; nothing on the straw matting
The robe: A cotton yukata is provided and is worn to dinner and to the bath. Left side over right
Dinner: Many small dishes, often in your room or a dining room at a set time
Bedding: Laid out on the floor, usually while you are eating
Bathing: Before dinner and again before bed is normal here
Breakfast: Rice, fish, egg, pickles. Ask the night before if you need it early

How an onsen works

Our first choice hereThe one we would book

Kawagoe Tobu Hotel川越東武ホテル — Ka-wa-go-e To-bu

This is the one to aim for in Saitama, and it opened in June 2020, so the building is new. 168 rooms, two minutes from the station on a covered walkway — which matters more than it sounds when you are pulling a suitcase in August or in February.

The reason to sleep in Saitama at all is the early morning. Kawagoe is close enough to Tokyo that almost everyone comes for the day — so the street of dark clay-walled merchant houses is a slow-moving crowd by eleven and almost empty before nine. Sleeping here is what puts you on that street before nine.
The bell tower, the confectionery lane and the clay warehouses are all in the same few streets. It is a walking town, not a list of separate sights.
It is a base for two directions, not one. Kawagoe in the morning, and the mountains at Chichibu — about an hour and twenty minutes from Ikebukuro on the Laview limited express — on another day.
Priced per room. For two or three people this is far cheaper than an inn that charges per person with meals.

Where: Two minutes on foot from Kawagoe station, connected by a raised walkway. The clay-walled merchant street is about fifteen minutes further on foot, or a short bus.
Address: 8-2 Wakita-honcho, Kawagoe, Saitama
Telephone: 049-241-0111
Booking: Through the official site, or the booking services below

Worth knowing

Buy a Tobu or Seibu day ticket at the Ikebukuro counter before you board. Both companies sell their own day tickets that come to less than the separate fares — buy at the Ikebukuro counter before you board. The station is not the old town. Allow the fifteen minutes on foot, or take the bus — the hotel is not on the clay-walled street itself.

Checked 2026-08-17

MAP Call Official site

Where to stay & onsen