It's a different matter with ryokan, Japan's traditional and often premium-priced inns, but outside the stellar class of regular hotels charging astronomical rates, their down-to-earth cousins aren't usually the kind of places to feel too strongly about. You generally expect little by way of character and interior decor, and can only simply hope the Internet connection speed isn't a throwback to antediluvian dial-up days.
But then there's the Fujiya Hotel, which stands dinstintively apart from the pack.
Ever since Frank Lloyd Wright's truly magnificent Imperial Hotel — which survived the awful 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and U.S. B-29 air raids, but not postwar urban developers — was shipped off from Tokyo to a theme park outside Nagoya in the 1960s, the Fujiya has had few rivals (other than, perhaps, the Nara Hotel) as Japan's iconic grand old hotel.
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