TOKYO -- Clean, comfortable and light-on-the-wallet hostels are attracting young foreign tourists who want to travel through Japan on the cheap. Many of the hostels have been able to keep their rates down by renovating and moving into office and other buildings.

A female university student from Finland who first learned about Grids Akihabara, a hostel in Tokyo's Akihabara neighborhood, through an acquaintance via a social network, was immediately attracted by the location, close to Akihabara Station.

When the 22-year-old student arrived at the hostel, she was pleasantly surprised by its cleanliness, despite the dirt-cheap prices. Per-person rates start at 3,300 yen (about $27) for a bunk bed in a dormitorylike room that Grids Akihabara describes as a "sleeper train experience."

The guest house opened last month.

Akihabara, now known for its anime- and manga-related otaku culture, is becoming popular among foreign tourists.

The Finnish student arrived May 1 with plans to stay a month while spending less than 500,000 yen.

She was to stay at Grids Akihabara for about a week while checking out the neighborhood as well as nearby Asakusa. She was looking forward to eating at a conveyor belt sushi place and having some tempura -- which she thought she could afford by keeping her accommodation bills low.

Grids Akihabara is owned by Sankei Building, a real estate company. The guesthouse can accommodate up to 124 visitors in shared rooms. It also has private single rooms as well as larger rooms for families and friends. One floor is women-only.

Grids Akihabara, which occupies a 34-year-old building, welcomes a number of tourists from overseas.

Kazunobu Iijima, president of Sankei Building, said the company made sure it used high-quality beds and interior furnishings.

Grids Akihabara also offers a couple of public areas. On the first floor is a lounge -- by day a cafeteria, by night a bar -- where guests and passersby alike can exchange information, get to know one another and make friends. The seventh floor has a common room.

A 23-year-old college man from the U.S. traveling solo liked that the common space is well-equipped and that it seems to foster comradeship.

First Cabin Tsukiji, a capsule hotel that opened in Tokyo's Chuo Ward in January, occupies an old office building. Its lobby is often crowded with foreign tourists with large pieces of luggage. There is also a bar, where a lot of the guests talk about their itineraries.

First Cabin, which operates the hotel, was able to install prefabricated capsule rooms without changing the layout of the existing building. This kept remodeling costs down and enabled First Cabin to also keep rates relatively low.

The operator opened its first hotel in 2009, in Osaka, and has since launched hotels in Akihabara, Kyoto and Hakata, Fukuoka Prefecture. Occupancy rates stay around 90%. Chairman Tadasu Oe said the company is meeting traveler demand for decent, low-cost rooms.

Heisei Enterprise, a bus service operator in Fujimi, Saitama Prefecture, is also getting into the guest house business. In August, it opened Wasabi Nippori, in Tokyo's Arakawa Ward.

A 23-year-old college student from Australia said he was planning to spend roughly 100,000 yen during his stay in Japan; he was paying 2,500 yen a night for a bunk at Wasabi Nippori. He said that it is worth staying at the hostel even though it is a little far from Tokyo's central neighborhoods because it is so cheap.

Len Kyoto Kawaramachi--Hostel, Cafe, Bar, Dining opened in March. According to the hostel, 50% of its guests are foreigners. Many of them come from Europe and the U.S. The hostel, which has 73 beds, is also a renovated office building.

First Cabin Tsukiji, which was converted from a more than 20-year-old office building, offers a relatively large private room, too.

Yokohama Hostel Village's Hayashi Kaikan, in Kotobukicho, near the Kannai and Ishikawacho train stations in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, gets about half of its guests from overseas. Previously, many occupants were day laborers. But as these workers aged and began to disappear, the hostel decided to shift its focus to foreign tourists.

The hostel opened in 2005. Its rooms start at around 2,000 yen per night. Ukiyoe woodblock prints, paintings that flourished in Japan from the 17th through 19th centuries and earthenware, welcome guests from abroad.