Four bedrooms by the Yamanote Line.
A ground-floor sleeping option, with a step at the entrance.

One minute on foot from Shin-Okubo Station on the JR Yamanote Line — you turn left out of the ticket gate, walk straight, and the house is at the end. Okubo Station on the JR Chuo-Sobu Line is about 4 minutes away, and Shinjuku Station is about a 17-minute walk. From Shin-Okubo it is 3 minutes by train to Shinjuku, 6 to Ikebukuro, 7 to Harajuku, 10 to Shibuya and 23 to Tokyo Station.

Yes, and this is one of the best things about the house. The four bedrooms are upstairs, but the ground floor is a complete home on one level: the living room has two double sofa beds, and the bathroom with its bathtub, the separate shower room, a washlet toilet and the kitchen are all on the same floor. Grandparents, anyone with a bad knee, or a family member recovering from surgery can sleep, wash and eat downstairs while the rest of the group takes the bedrooms above. Ask us before booking if you need the ground-floor sofa beds prepared. There is a step up from the entrance into the house, as in most Japanese homes.

Yes, with a message first — Airbnb's form will not let you select more than 16. Nine beds, two to a bed, plus three roll-away beds (smaller than a single) comes to 21. Send us your dates and the exact number of adults and children and we will arrange it. Be clear-eyed about what twenty people in 132 m² means: beds are shared, the roll-aways go in the bedrooms, and there are two bathrooms and two toilets. Groups do this and enjoy it, but it is a different stay from twelve people in the same house.

Neither. People searching for a guest house in Shin-Okubo usually find shared houses with bunk rooms, a shared kitchen and a shared bathroom, and that is not what this is. You book the whole 132 m² house: four bedrooms with doors that close, your own kitchen, your own bathroom and shower room, and nobody else in the building. It costs more than a bunk in a dormitory and less than three or four hotel rooms, which is why groups of four and up end up here. If you are one or two people and price per bed is what matters, a guest house will suit you better than we will.

No — a good share of our bookings are four to seven people. With four people you take a bedroom each, or two couples take two, and the ground floor with the kitchen, the long table and the living room is all yours. Compared with two hotel rooms in Shinjuku you usually pay about the same or less, and you are one minute from the Yamanote Line. The house only starts to feel full above twelve, and takes up to 21 at a squeeze.

Sixteen is where Airbnb's booking form stops, not where the house stops. There are 9 beds — 4 double and 2 semi-double across three bedrooms, 1 queen in the fourth, and 2 sofa beds that open to double size in the living room — plus 3 roll-away beds. Two to a bed plus the roll-aways is 21 people. For a party above 16, message us before booking and we will set it up. The honest version: around 12 is where the house is comfortable. A party of 13–21 means sharing beds or taking a roll-away, and two bathrooms for twenty people is a queue in the morning. Tell us your exact group and we will tell you plainly whether it will work.

Eight: a bed each — the seven beds upstairs (two double in Bedroom 1, two double in Bedroom 2, two semi-double in Bedroom 3, one queen in Bedroom 4) plus one of the two sofa beds downstairs, or one couple shares the queen. Ten: the seven upstairs beds and both downstairs sofa beds, with one couple sharing. Twelve: three of the nine beds are shared, the other six are single — or keep the ground floor free and share five beds upstairs. This is the size at which the house still feels roomy. Sixteen: seven beds shared, two single, using both sofa beds. Above sixteen the three roll-away beds come out and every bed is shared; the form stops at 16, so message us first.

Two floors, 131.95 m². The ground floor is one long open space: entrance, kitchen with an island, the dining table for twelve, and the living room at the far end, plus the bathroom, a separate shower room, a washlet toilet, a twin-basin vanity and the laundry cupboard. All four bedrooms and a second washlet toilet are upstairs. There is no lift — the bedrooms are up a staircase.

The house sits on a quiet residential lane, not on the Korean food street. Guests rate the location 4.8 and repeatedly note how quiet it is inside for somewhere a minute from the station. The other half of the terrace house is a private residence, so the house rules ask guests to keep the volume down indoors, on the balcony and on the street outside — especially in the evening.

Yes. Two baby cribs with mobiles, two bed guards, two high chairs, two strollers, two bibs and a bottle set with cleaning tools are kept in the house, along with toys and picture books, so families can pack lighter. The bedrooms are on the 2nd floor and the ground floor is one continuous space, which makes it easy to keep an eye on small children while cooking.

Yes — there is a drum-type washer-dryer in a cupboard beside the stairs, with detergent provided. It washes and dries in one cycle, so you can start a load on your way out in the morning and come back to clothes that are already dry. There is also a coin laundry nearby if a big group needs to run several loads at once.

Two places to wash and two toilets. The ground floor has a bathroom with a deep soaking bathtub and, next to it, a separate shower room — so two people can wash at the same time — plus a washlet toilet and a twin-basin vanity. There is a second washlet toilet upstairs beside the bedrooms, which is what stops the morning queue for a group of ten or twelve.

There is a projector and a pull-down screen in the living room instead, set up for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. With the sofas turned towards it, it works better for a group of twelve than a television would.

No. Parties, drinking parties and loud music are prohibited, and so is making noise, smoking or drinking on the street outside the house. Smoking is not permitted anywhere indoors. This is a residential street with neighbours on the other side of the wall; breaking these rules carries a flat charge under the house rules.

Pricing moves with the season, how far ahead you book and how many of you there are, so the only accurate figure is the total shown on the Airbnb listing for your exact dates and group. Compare that total against the four or five Shinjuku hotel rooms your group would otherwise need, not against one room. Booking and payment go through the listing, which shows live availability.