First Mitsui Garden Hotel in Fukuoka
Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion to Open for Business
on Thursday, June 27, 2019
A hotel where guests can experience new charm in Fukuoka
with its modern arrangements of Hakata culture.

June 18, 2019
Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd.
Mitsui Fudosan Hotel Management Co., Ltd.

Tokyo, Japan, June 18, 2019 – Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd., a leading global real estate company headquartered in Tokyo and Mitsui Fudosan Hotel Management Co., Ltd. announced today that Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion (300 guestrooms; 2-8-15, Hakataekimae, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture) will open for business on Thursday, June 27, 2019. This will be the second facility in the Kyushu area after Mitsui Garden Hotel Kumamoto, and first to debut in Fukuoka Prefecture.

Hakata is a bustling town at the center of Kyushu’s political, economic, and cultural landscape. JR Hakata Station serves as a chief station for Fukuoka City and a base for those traveling around Kyushu for leisure. There is a lot of activity around the station, which visitors often use during business trips and other excursions. Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion is only a few minutes away from JR Hakata Station and Gion Station on the Kuko Subway Line, located on the corner of Hakata Ekimae Dori and Gion Odori. It is also within walking distance of the Nakasu and Tenjin areas, making it a convenient and comfortable location to use as a base for leisure and business activities.

The hotel was designed under the concept of “HAKATA TSUMUGI: Hakata townhouses that link memories of good old-fashioned towns, people, and culture to the future” so visitors can experience the region’s new charm. The Gion area, where the hotel is located, is a place that remains steeped in the rich history and culture of Hakata. It was designed with the hope that guests within the hotel will enjoy experiencing a sense of the region’s passionate spirit, represented by the Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival as Kushida Shrine’s grand annual event attended by many people, as well as the stylish culture expressed by the Yamakasa festival’s parade floats and happi coats, which have different designs depending on the parade route. The interior has also been given a modern design and art with historical and cultural items reminiscent of Hakata, such as the Kushida Bunko at Kushida Shrine, which served as Japan’s first community library, durable and beautiful Hakata-ori textiles, and more. Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion was tenderly developed with the goal of becoming a hotel that will be long beloved by visitors from Japan and abroad, as well as local residents.

Features of Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion

• Close to JR Hakata Station and Gion Station on the Kuko Subway Line in a comfortable location to use as a base for leisure and business travelers
• Designed for an unforgettable hotel experience in Hakata under the concept of “HAKATA TSUMUGI: Hakata townhouses that link memories of good old-fashioned towns, people, and culture to the future”
• A large bath on the highest floor rich in variation that evokes the image of floating on machiya townhouse roofs in Hakata
• The restaurant TORIDEN, which specializes in mizutaki chicken stew originating from Hakata, will be making its debut in a hotel business format alongside the restaurants Uoden and Hakata #092

Building exterior

Guestroom (Moderate twin)

Bathhouse (Women’s open-air bath)

Features of Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion

1. Location

The hotel is located approximately seven minutes by foot from JR Hakata Station, which is a key station for Fukuoka City and Hakata as a bustling town at the center of Kyushu’s political, economic, and cultural landscape for those traveling around Kyushu for leisure as well as those for business, and five minutes on foot from Gion Station on the Kuko Subway Line. The hotel is situated in a highly convenient location on the corner of Hakata Ekimae Dori and Gion Odori and near CANAL CITY HAKATA, one of the best retail facilities in the area. With the Nakasu and Tenjin areas within walking distance and a new station on the Nanakuma Subway Line (Mid Station (tentative name)) expected to open nearby in 2022, the hotel can be used comfortably as a base for leisure and business activities.

2. Design concept
HAKATA TSUMUGI: Hakata townhouses that link memories of good old-fashioned towns, people, and culture to the future

The Gion area, where the hotel is located, is a place that remains steeped in the rich history and culture of Hakata. It evokes an atmosphere of machiya townhouses brimming with activity and merchants passing through. The hotel replicates a Hakata-style machiya, with the lobby serving as a misenoma*, guestroom floors decorated as traditional tatami and inner rooms, and a large bath decorated as a hot spring.
Hakata continues to keep its unique culture alive even now through Japan’s first community library Kushida Bunko inside the grounds of Kushida Shrine, durable and beautiful Hakata-ori textiles, merchants’ machiya townhouses, and Hakata-bei shingled walls from long ago. Hakata also has many events such as the incredibly lively annual Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival and Hakata Dontaku Festival, one of Japan’s largest festivals with more than two millions participants, and improvisational performances called Hakata niwaka that are imbued with the region’s signature humor. Guests can feel Hakata’s charm and its history and culture everywhere through Mitsui Garden Hotel Fukuoka Gion’s interior designs and modern decorative art, as the hotel was developed with the goal of becoming long beloved by visitors and local residents.
In addition, various places inside the hotel have adopted the five colors of traditional Hakata-ori textiles (purple, blue, red, dark blue, and gold) as a way for guests to enjoy the region’s visual designs.

*Store-front room (misenoma): A room facing the street for commercial purposes. The word “misenoma” in Japanese refers to a store-front room or showroom separate from the townhouse’s living quarters.

Lobby

Elevator hall

3. Facility Overview

(1)（HAKATA BUNKO: Lobby, front counter, and lounge (1F)

The communal area on the first floor is called the HAKATA BUNKO, and has been decorated in the style of a Hakata machiya store-front room. This is a place that ties the streets and people of Hakata to the inside of the hotel, and a space where guests can relax. The HAKATA BUNKO also offers a landscape where guests can experience the atmosphere of Hakata’s history and culture.
After passing through the entrance, the lobby has cobblestone floors in the style of machiya townhouses and a modern art wall designed with Hakata-bei shingles. Behind the front counter on the left-hand side, a work of art entitled An Evening View of Hakata Bay welcomes visitors and depicts a view that could have been seen from this location long ago. The front counter designed in the likeness of a kimono chest also delivers an atmosphere of a bygone age in which Hakata merchants would sell kimono in their store-front rooms.
Taken from the concept of the Kushida Bunko, the library-like lounge area possesses a modern arrangement of traditional crafts in addition to books about Hakata, and serves as a bright and open space where guests can get a sense of the history and culture of the area.

Lobby

Front counter

Lounge

Art

(2) Guestrooms (2–12F)

The guestrooms are decorated as the sitting rooms and inner rooms of a machiya townhouse, and all 300 rooms can accommodate two or more guests for overnight stays. Whether for leisure or business, the hotel offers guestrooms where visitors can feel at peace in Hakata.
As for interior design, in order for guests to feel a sense of relaxing at home, the entire room is incorporated with Hakata’s traditional culture by not only unifying it with a single beige tone, but also decorating it with art panels of Hakata-ori textile with kenjo patterns and scenes from the Hakata Dontaku Festival.
In addition, two rooms for distinctive executive twin are available. These spacious guestrooms have display boxes filled with traditional craftwork and artwork depicting landscapes of the town to pique curiosity, and serves as a luxurious hideaway for adults.

Gustroom (moderate twin)

Guestroom (comfort)

Guestroom (superior double)

Guestroom (triple)

Guestroom (executive twin)

Guestroom (executive twin)

Check-in from 3:00 PM/Check-out until 11:00 AM
All rooms are equipped with a 43-inch LCD TV, free Wi-Fi, air treatment system with humidifier, thermos, hair dryer, universal multi-device phone charger, mattresses made by top US hotel bed supplier Serta, original pillows, iron, nightwear, and communication satellite broadcasting. All rooms are non-smoking (Designated smoking area available)

(3) Large bath: Rooftop Living Bath (13F)

The highest floor of the hotel houses a peaceful hot water spa to relieve the day’s exhaustion called the Rooftop Living Bath. It has a large bath decorated in tiles to evoke the image of floating over the roof of a machiya townhouse.
In addition to a mock hot spring serving as an indoor bath and a mock open-air carbon bath, a reclining bath and steam sauna have also been installed to warm guests to their core.
The glass windows of the indoor bath are designed with yukimi shoji split sliding doors which guests can open to gaze upon a garden rich with sentiment for each of the four seasons. The blue tiles of the reclining bath give the impression that one is floating in the sky above Hakata, allowing guests to relax with the passage of time.
Women can also spend time after a bath unwinding in a powder room that has been decorated as an especially luxurious living space.
<Operating hours> 3:00 PM to 1:00 AM, 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM *For overnight guests only

Men’s open-air bath

Indoor bath

Women’s powder room

(4) Restaurants: Uoden and Hakata #092 (1F)

studio092 Co., ltd., which operates the Hakata-style chicken stew restaurant TORIDEN, will open Uoden, a seafood buffet restaurant that offers breakfast and local cuisine, and Hakata #092, a liquor store and bar that will serve as a base for “Hakata-hopping.”
The restaurants will offer local cuisine and ala carte dishes that use ingredients gathered from various places in Kyushu.

Uoden

Uoden is a restaurant that conveys the qualities of Fukuoka and Hakata in a simple manner to guests from outside of Fukuoka Prefecture who are staying at the hotel for leisure or business. A large, streamlined roof was installed in the restaurant’s interior, and designed in the image of the Kushida Shrine, which holds the Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival, and the oyster huts of Itoshima. It is a space reminiscent of a bustling night scene at an oyster hut while maintaining a luxurious feeling.
For breakfast, guests can enjoy a buffet with Japanese and Western-style offerings and Kyushu’s local cuisine, comparing rice produced in Kyushu and miso soup made with delicious stock. In the evening, the restaurant offers traditional local cuisine and ala carte dishes made with fish and seasonal ingredients from Kyushu. All seats are equipped with partitions, allowing guests to easily use the restaurant as a setting for a business dinner in a space that feels like a private room.

Hakata #092

With a focus on sake from Kyushu and all over Japan as a national liquor, this bar offers a place where guests can feel a connection while enjoying different ways to drink and the aroma of spirits in Hakata style. The bar is arranged as an active space for Hakata nightlife, with a lantern display installation evocative of Japanese festivals that constrasts the design of the four walls.
Hakata #092 is a standing bar that guests can freely enjoy as a place where people mingle, amble, and gather in the area in front of Hakata Station, and as a flexible, easy base for “Hakata-hopping.” It proposes a new style of standing bar where guests can enjoy rich sake, mackeral dishes and delicious appetizers prepared with fish from Kyushu.

Uoden restaurant

Breakfast menu example

Hakata #092 restaurant

MAP

Nanakuma Subway Line Mid Station (tentative name) scheduled to open in 2022