Northern Kyushu Trip | Fukuoka Accommodation | The Lively Hakata Fukuoka | Convenient, Brand-New and Affordable | Happy Hour with Free-Flow Beer & Fruit Wine

📜 Information

Dates of stay: 2019-12-08 ~ 2019-12-09 (double room, one night), 2019-12-10 ~ 2019-12-12 (double room, two nights)
Room type: Standard double room (without breakfast)
Price: ¥ 6,480 (double room, one night), ¥ 12,150 (double room, two nights)
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Address: 〒810-0801 5-2-18 Nakasu, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture
Phone: +81 92-262-2009
Official website: https://www.the-lively.com/
Booking site: https://www.booking.com/hotel/jp/the-lively-hakata-fukuoka.zh-tw.html?aid=8003516

We stayed three nights in Fukuoka this time, and The Lively Hakata Fukuoka is a hotel that only opened on 2019-07-27. The Lively is a hotel chain with one property each in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka; all three go for a stylish designer look, and the Fukuoka one, The Lively Hakata Fukuoka, should be the newest of them.

What first caught my eye was the price — really cheap compared with other places to stay in Fukuoka — and it scores highly both on booking.com and Google Maps. I read through the reviews and there weren't any major issues, plus being a newly opened hotel the facilities should all be new, so in the end I picked it for our three nights in Fukuoka!

P.S. When I check ratings, I always make a point of also reading the lowest-rated comments to see what's actually going on, because sometimes people leave a bad review over something trivial. I use it as another benchmark and it's usually pretty accurate — give it a try!

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📝 Overall Review

Here's my overall verdict on this hotel:

✔ Pros

Convenient location, right at Exit 2 of Nakasu-Kawabata subway station
Cheap — just over ¥6,000 a night
Brand-new facilities; the hotel only opened in the second half of 2019
Stylish, design-conscious interiors
Front desk communicates smoothly in English

❌ Cons

Very small rooms — you can't open two suitcases at once
The bathroom is also tiny, and drainage is slow, so the tub fills with water while you shower
Central air conditioning: you can't choose heating or cooling, only fan strength
Poor soundproofing
The trash can design isn't very practical
Not much tissue paper provided in the room

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📍Location & Transport

The hotel sits right around the corner from Exit 2 of Nakasu-Kawabata subway station — less than a minute's walk. But this exit has no elevator, so if you have large luggage I'd suggest using the exit with an elevator (Exit 4) and walking over from there.

This is the subway exit — you come up these stairs

Once outside, just turn left into this alley and you'll see The Lively Hakata Fukuoka right away. There are also several convenience stores and drugstores nearby, so the location is extremely handy.

In the other direction from the exit is the head store of Ichiran Ramen — very convenient if you fancy a late-night snack!

Walk ahead and turn left into the alley

Even the entrance lobby already looks nicely designed

Nakasu-Kawabata is Fukuoka's famous red-light district, but since The Lively Hakata Fukuoka is on the other side of it, you won't walk through that area coming from the subway.

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🏢 Hotel Environment

The first thing you see on entering is this bar counter and the high-ceilinged lobby — a very different feel from the business hotels I've stayed at in Japan before, more like a upscale hotel or a bar. It's quite a fresh experience.

The high-ceilinged lobby and bar counter

There are plenty of comfortable seating areas around the lobby, and we happened to arrive right during the hotel's Happy Hour (5:30 ~ 6:30 daily), with free-flow beer and fruit wine!

Happy Hour daily from 5:30 to 6:30 pm

Lots of people relaxing in the lobby with music and the hotel's complimentary drinks

Since this is also peak check-in time, we got to enjoy the Happy Hour service while waiting to check in.

The check-in counter is small and tucked by the door, with only two service windows, so when it's busy the wait can be long. That said, one of the staff was a foreign employee and the other a Japanese employee who could speak English, so the whole process went smoothly with no communication problems.

Next to it is the hotel's dining area, which is also where guests have breakfast.

We didn't include breakfast in our booking this time, though, so I can't say how the breakfast is.

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🛏 The Room

The room isn't big — the bed basically takes up most of the space, and you can't fully open two suitcases. The bed itself is a normal size, not large, but it's just the right firmness and comfortable to sleep on.

Beside the bed there's a stylish cabinet holding the fridge and everything else. The trash can, though, is poorly designed and very small, which isn't great in practice. There's also very little tissue paper in the room, so it runs out quickly.

The basics — water, coffee and a kettle — are all there

Open the drawer and you'll find a yukata plus the usual hairdryer and slippers

The walkway inside the room is very narrow too

The bathroom is also extremely tiny 😂

Just like typical Japanese business hotels, the room and bathroom are very small, but all the essentials are provided. One drawback here, though: the bathtub drains very slowly, so water pools in the tub whenever you shower and takes a while to drain away. I'm not sure whether it's actually clogged or just badly designed.

The toiletries are The Lively's own brand

All the basic bath amenities are provided too

In actual use, apart from the comfortable bed, there were a few downsides.

The central air conditioning doesn't let you choose heating or cooling — it seems to be centrally controlled, so in each room you can only adjust the fan speed. Sometimes it got too hot and we could only turn it off and open the window for ventilation, which isn't very convenient. The other issue is the poor soundproofing: one night I could hear snoring from the room next door. 😅

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Decor in the stairwell

Taking price, location and comfort into account, I'd still recommend this hotel. Accommodation in Fukuoka really isn't cheap, so getting this price right next to the subway makes it pretty good value.

2019 Northern Kyushu Independent Trip:

2019 Northern Kyushu Independent Trip: Full Itinerary Overview

Day 1: Kokura

Day 2: Mojiko and Shimonoseki

Northern Kyushu Trip | Mojiko Attractions | Kokura to Mojiko Transport | Mojiko Retro District | Kaikyo Plaza
Northern Kyushu Trip | Mojiko Food | BEAR FRUIT Baked Curry | Mojiko Specialty | A Mojiko Must-Eat
Northern Kyushu Trip | Shimonoseki Attractions | Mojiko to Shimonoseki Transport | Karato Market | Japan-Qing Treaty Memorial Hall | Akama Shrine

Day 3: Yufuin

Days 4~5: Fukuoka

More Japan accommodation and attraction references

Japan Travel | Japan Accommodation List

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Travel Sean

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