Our stay at this hotel left much to be desired from the way we were checked in, to the rooms, to the service which was not characteristic of Japanese hospitality. First is the check-in process. Our group of 10 people had emailed well in advance of our arrival for our reservations and to have rooms that would meet our needs. Upon check-in, we let my in-laws (5 adults) go first as they were staying fewer nights than my family was. They were given 2 rooms in the same floor. When it came to our turn, we needed 2 rooms because we were 5 (we had a 13, 11 and 9 year old with my husband and I). They gave us separate rooms on different floors in spite of knowing the age of our kids (from the email). When we asked to trade rooms with our in-laws, they said it was impossible. We asked to be upgraded and we would pay the difference, but they were unable to accommodate us due to the hotel being fully booked. However, it wasn't the lack of availability or the inability to trade rooms that cast a shadow on our hotel stay at this place, but rather the way the front desk personnel handled the situation which made us feel like we were troublesome and asking for something very unreasonable. Granted there was a language barrier, but proper non-verbal communication, would have made us feel better about the situation. But sadly, they had someone at the front who didn't speak English and who seemed to not be up to the challenge of welcoming guests. So we accepted our rooms but were inconvenienced moving from one room to another because the elevators needed a key card to move between floors. Now for the rooms. My husband took the bigger room and the 2 bigger kids, while I stayed in the smaller room with our youngest. The rooms were very, very dark, necessitating cellphone lights to unpack our luggage, and in my husband's room to navigate the kitchenette and laundry area (yes, his room came with that!). The bathroom in his room had a separate shower/tub, toilet, and sink area, which also needed extra light to see well. I kid you not, it was like entering a bat cave, even for the children with excellent eye-sight. The rooms had very little closet space and hangers. Now for the housekeeping service which also needs a lot of improvement. There were 2 days wherein we left the room at 8am and returned well after 7pm. We dutifully placed the make-up room sign on the door. Upon our arrival, the sign was still there and the rooms hadn't been fixed at all. We needed to call the front desk to change the towels. They seemed to not know how many people were staying in the room because they would send too little or too much bathrobes or towels. When housekeeping cleaned the room, the replenished the bar incosistently, sometimes only giving 1 coffee or 1 sachet of sugar. Bottled water was also very limited. The one shining light here was the lady manager (I forget her name) who tried to really make us feel welcome. It was a case of too little too late. All other personnel need so much more training. This is not the first time we've stayed at a Mercure in Japan, and in we have stayed in Mercure in other countries. But this is the first time we were not quite happy with this chain. I hope they improve because the location is great.