Because nothing is lost, nothing is created and everything is transformed, a hotelier will very soon be operating Nintendo’s former Kyoto premises.
In 2014, Nintendo inaugurated its brand new premises in the south of Kyoto, definitively drawing a line under the historic workshop occupied from 1933, bordered by the Takasegawa and Kamogawa rivers. In January 2020, a hotelier announced his intention to operate this art deco building. Two years later, the first reservations are now open for lovers of video game history and Shinto temples.
Nintendo no hotteru
The official website of this hotel, baptized Marufoko, in homage to one of the trademarks registered by Nintendo to market playing cards in the post-Second World War period, has in fact just opened the “Reservations” page of its site. From April 1 (no, that’s not a joke), tourists already there will be able to spend one or more nights in one of the establishment’s 18 rooms.
The only problem: this will require finding a way to enter Japanese territory, a prospect made particularly difficult for the time being by the Covid-19 pandemic. While waiting to be able to fall asleep imagining what Nintendo was producing in the room that serves as your bathroom, the Japanese at GameWatch have posted some photos of the building.
A bicycle
The various rooms currently on offer vary per day between 97,000 yen (about 750 euros) for 33 square meters and 195,000 yen for 74 square meters (about 1,500 euros). Is that the price for sleeping somewhere between tradition and modernity? Still, the Nintendo premises (the real ones) will only be a 40-minute walk away. But everyone knows that in Kyoto, the bicycle is king.