Suica Penguin Room: Is It Still Available? Our Stay at Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro

If you’ve ever tapped a Suica card in Japan, you’ve met the little penguin on it. After 25 years, that cute mascot is retiring. JR East says the Suica Penguin officially graduates in March 2027, and Japan is already saying its goodbyes.

What you might not know? The penguin had its own hotel room. We stayed in the Suica Penguin Room at Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro in October 2024, and it was literally the cutest, most unique themed room we’ve ever stayed at in Japan. We still wear the pajamas and use the tea set we brought home.

Read on to find out if the room is still available, plus all the cuteness from our stay and where to say goodbye to the penguin before it goes away.

Is the Suica Penguin Room Still Available?

The room is not available at the moment.

The version we stayed in, the Suica Penguin Room ～Café Time～, ended in March 2025. The hotel then ran a special anniversary version until March 31, 2026, and since then no penguin-themed room has been available.

Here’s the thing though. The hotel has brought this room back 3 times since 2011, so a final goodbye version before March 2027 would not surprise us at all. If a farewell room ever happens, we will keep this post updated.

The Suica Penguin Is Retiring: Timeline + Where to Say Goodbye

When JR East announced in November 2025 that the penguin is graduating after 25 years, we didn’t want to believe it. This little penguin has been part of our Japan life since we studied abroad in Tokyo in 2018. It was on the card that got us to class every single morning. And it seems like just yesterday we were sleeping in its hotel room.

If you want to say goodbye too, these are the retirement dates that matter:

• Early September 2026 (planned): 3 successor candidates revealed, and the public votes
• November 18, 2026: the winning design announced, on Suica’s 25th birthday
• March 31, 2027: the penguin officially graduates, and the new character takes over in April

So you have until the end of March 2027. Here’s where we’d go.

At Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro. We know the Suica room isn’t available anymore, but the dessert shop downstairs still makes the penguin cake and pudding, only 30 a day. They’re the same little penguin cakes we got during our stay, just in new flavors now. Ours were chocolate, rich and smooth. The hotel also runs penguin buffets a few times a year.

Pensta shops. The official penguin stores, and there are 4: Ueno inside the station with a little penguin café attached, Shinjuku in Lumine Est B1, Omiya, and the biggest one in Sakuragicho, Yokohama. We walked into the Ueno and Shinjuku ones and immediately fell in love, it’s floor-to-ceiling penguin in there. Go sooner rather than later, the goodbye merch is getting picked clean.

The station stamp rally. Until November 30, 2026, you can collect 30 different penguin images just by tapping through JR gates around the Yamanote Line. Free souvenir hunting with your train card, which feels like the most fitting goodbye there is. We’ll be in Japan this October, and we’re absolutely doing this ourselves.

Planning a bigger Tokyo trip? Here are more fun things to do in Tokyo.

What Is the Suica Penguin Hotel Room?

It was one single room inside Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro, with a view of Ikebukuro Station out the window. Fitting for a train mascot.

Japan has plenty of themed hotel rooms, but in our opinion this one was the most unique of them all, because it was built around the mascot of a train card, the little penguin on the card everyone taps to ride the train in Tokyo.

The hotel first created the room for Suica’s 10th anniversary back in 2011, and it kept coming back over the years in different versions. Ours was the ～Café Time～ edition, designed like you’re having afternoon tea with the penguin.

And they committed to the theme: penguin plush, penguin walls, penguin bed sheets, all of it. Only one group could stay each night, so every month it booked out almost instantly.

The location made it even easier to love. Ikebukuro is packed with food, anime stores, and arcades. Sunshine City is right nearby, and the hotel has enough restaurants downstairs that you could spend a lazy day without ever leaving.

Deciding where to base yourself in the city? Here’s our full guide on where to stay in Tokyo.

What’s Inside the Suica Penguin Room

The second we walked in, it was penguin everything: plush toys, artwork, wall stickers, even the bed sheets. We dropped our bags and just started hunting for penguins. They were hidden all over the room.

There was a giant Suica Penguin sitting in the corner, and we hugged it every single time we walked past. You did get to take home some of the stuff, but not the big plushie, of course.

The bookshelf of guest diaries got us the most. Some went back to 2012: drawings, notes, little stories from strangers who loved this room before we did. We sat there flipping through and were just so touched by everyone’s experiences. And we wrote down our own entry too.

And the whole time, a tiny music box played soft jazz in the background, which made the room feel like our own little penguin café. Almost 2 years later, we can still picture all of it without opening our camera roll.

Exclusive Perks of the Suica Penguin Room

This room wasn’t just cute, it also came with some fun extras.

First, the food. We got 2 Suica Penguin mousse cakes as part of the stay, picked up from the dessert shop downstairs. They were almost too cute to eat. There was also an in-room breakfast for 2, with Suica-themed pancakes, eggs, salad, fruit, and yogurt. Full spread, and one of the best hotel breakfasts we’ve had in Tokyo.

Then the take-home gifts. Each stay came with a Suica Penguin tea set: cups, plates, and utensils. The hotel even sells similar penguin cup and saucer sets online now. We also bought the themed pajamas for 6,000 yen the moment we saw them.

To this day, I still wear the pajamas almost every night, and the tea set still comes out whenever we’re craving tea.

How We Booked the Suica Penguin Room

Booking this room was a whole event. Reservations opened on the 1st of each month for stays 2 months out, and with only one group allowed per night, every month was basically a race.

We went in on the day the next month’s dates were released, and over half of them were already taken. We grabbed one of the remaining dates and paid ¥38,500 for the 2 of us.

The price went up to ¥41,000 for the later anniversary version, and people kept booking it out anyway.

The room is gone, but the hotel itself is still bookable, penguin cakes and all. And if a farewell version ever opens up, expect it to disappear even faster than the monthly race we ran.

Our Experience Staying at the Suica Penguin Room

Check-In and Check-Out

Check-in came with 2 vouchers: one for the penguin mousse cakes downstairs, and one for breakfast, where we picked our delivery time with the room service team. We told the desk we wanted the penguin loungewear too, and they added it to our stay at the discounted rate right there.

Check-out was easy. Standard time was 12 PM, and we dropped the key in the key box near the first-floor elevator.

Room Service and Breakfast

The next morning, breakfast rolled in right at the time we picked: Suica pancakes, eggs, salad, juice, coffee, yogurt, fruit, and a little basket of bread and butter. The staff came back later to clear it all, so we just stayed in our penguin pajamas doing absolutely nothing. That bread and butter is the thing we still talk about.

It was the kind of calm, slow morning that made us want to book a second night. Which, of course, we couldn’t.

Was the Suica Penguin Room Worth It? Our Honest Review

Was it worth ¥38,500? For us, 100% yes.

But we’ll be straight with you: this room was for people who love penguins, the Suica mascot, or really unique themed stays. If that’s not you, the regular rooms in the same hotel work just fine, with the same location.

The room itself wasn’t huge, but it was comfortable, and the themed details went way beyond decor. The diaries, the cakes, the music box in the background, it all felt personal instead of gimmicky.

Looking back now, we’re just glad we went when we did. The room is gone, the penguin is graduating, and nobody will ever get to stay there again (for now). We got to spend one night inside a little piece of Suica history, and we would pay for it all over again.

Would We Stay at Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro Again?

Yes, this hotel itself is so worth staying at, even without the special penguin-themed room.

The rooms are quiet in a way that genuinely surprised us. Ikebukuro is one of the busiest corners of Tokyo, and from our room we heard none of it.

But the airport access is the real seller. The Airport Limousine Bus from both Haneda and Narita stops right at the hotel’s front door, the 2nd stop on the route, so there’s no dragging luggage through train transfers after a long flight. And once you’re settled, Shinjuku and most of the big Tokyo spots are an easy ride away.

So if you want a calm base with the easiest airport landing in Tokyo, this is the place we point friends to.

Figuring out the rest of your trip? Here’s how many days we’d spend in Tokyo.

Conclusion

The Suica Penguin Room was one of our favorite stays in all of Japan, and now it lives on in the guest diaries, our camera roll, and the pajamas I still wear at night.

If you missed the room, you haven’t missed your chance to say goodbye. The penguin is around until March 2027, the Pensta shops and the stamp rally are waiting, and Hotel Metropolitan Ikebukuro is still the same calm, easy base.

And if the hotel brings the room back one more time before the big goodbye, you’ll read about it here first.