I'm a regular visitor to Tokyo, and I'm trying to book a hotel there on the last weekend in March. Every decent hotel in Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Roppongi is booked! How is that possible? Does anyone know of some major event happening that weekend?

If you visit Japan regularly you know that the end of March is either the start/mid or end of cherry blossom season in Tokyo. Most of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku are booked or very busy during late March through mid April.

Aloha!

I've gone to Tokyo during the cherry blossom season, but I've never seen a situation with virtually every nice hotel booked.

Try booking.com as it lets you search on your dates across it's entire Tokyo database, and then you can investigate whether any of the hotels available suit your needs.

It really is the wackiest thing. There are a bunch of APA Hotels (which I've never heard of) at $500+ a night, one at the Four Seasons for $1.8K a night, and a few shadier looking hotels/motels. I've never seen anything like this. I can't believe people booking all all these hotels rooms are in Tokyo that weekend for the cherry blossoms. Even the New Otani and Okura are totally booked. I also checked out Kyoto, and the situation is very similar.

Did you try directly booking through the hotel? That is how I was able to book my hotel in Kyoto, when all the search engines said no availability.

Try the B and the Miyako Garden hotel chains. They're a step or two below the level of sheraton/New Otani -- smaller rooms, fewer services -- but in my experience they're all clean and safe.

Wow, yes, not much left on booking.com for that weekend.

There are two different APA hotels that are only $200 (US) per night, for the last Fri/ Sat in March. I don't know your exact dates, so am guessing.

Japanican seems to have no hotels for those nights, just capsule places which I don't count as I'd never book one.

I'm having the same difficulty for night of March 29th! Nothing at all anywhere. May end up trying airbnb, but not the best option as solo female. I need to be at Haneda on morning of 30th, so may just try further out on an easy access train line! What a weird situation in such a large city!

Read a tip on Japan Guide today that although there are very few beds left to book directly, some of the big tour companies are holding beds to sell as part of packages, so it may be worth checking into those...

We were able to secure reservations for every day except the 29th. I understand that the cancellation policy at almost all of these hotels is 24 hours, so we're going to go ahead and go and hope there will be at least one in all of Tokyo! Sheesh!