Kokusai 21 International Hotel

Excellent transfer bus from train station. Well advertised in the hotel, but tricky to find in advance as it isn’t mentioned on the English version of their website. It is on the Japanese website together with an English translation(!). Just google “kokusai 21 transfer” and you will find the timetable and excellent instructions on how to find the bus. It would be most helpful,if the hotel emailed a link to booking.com customers or added the information to the English site. The rooms are spacious, the public areas splendid, restaurants in the hotel great, and Nagano itself is a very walkable town.

They also have a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel (and hotel to airport), from the hotel to the Zenkoji temple and from the hotel to onsen (and back from onsen to hotel). This was super nice!! Would be great if they can advertise this more beforehand. We only kew about this service after we walked 15 min from the station to the hotel. Rooms were big, people were nice, overall really liked our stay!

Huge room on ‘executive’ floor with lounge and desk area, seperate toilet, walk in shower and jetted bath. Mattress was very comfortable. Great shuttle bus from station which also goes occasionally to Temple and regularly in the afternoon to the public onsen. Find it at East exit of station. If you are staying here try out 2 local restaurants which are both within easy walking distance of this hotel 1. Best spicy miso ramen (local miso) at Men-ya Unnyan and also 2. Best pork tonkatsu at Tonkatsu Akiyama.

Our stay was excellent. I posted a video on IG @chels_is_elsewhere! If you're looking to do some sightseeing around Nagano, Hotel Kokusai 21 is perfectly located about 5 minutes driving from JR Nagano Station, 7 minutes driving from Zenkoji, and like 5 minutes from Uruoikan Onsen. They have a shuttle bus that runs multiple times a day to each of these locations, but you could also take a cheap taxi or walk on a nice day from the hotel to any of these places. We stayed in a suite and it was so spacious. The views were also great! The bathtub was large and had a small tv to watch while bathing, which was cool. Staff kept our bags after checkout so we could do a little more sightseeing before leaving Nagano. We also had dinner one night at the Italian restaurant in the basement, and it was very good and well-priced. I liked everything about this hotel and wish I could have stayed longer.

Free shuttle bus to and from Nagano Station makes the transfer from or to the station easy. The hotel also provides a number of restaurants at reasonable price though we didn't have a chance to try any due to our short stay. The room is of reasonable size with a sitting area between the bed and the desk. There are sockets next to the bed. It's within walking distance to Zenkoji temple and the hotel's shuttle also takes it guess there during certain time of the day.