I booked a 60 minute massage. It was 4pm when I arrived, right on time. The receptionist was very friendly, as was the guy who came out immediately to come take my coat and offer me a drink. However, I had to give this spa one star based on the service itself. I had Keiko as a masseuse and honestly she gave me the worst massage of my life. I found myself wondering halfway through if she suffered from ADD. She would give my left foot three quick squeezes, then cover it up and move to my left foot. Three squeezes, cover up. Uncover one arm, rub quickly up and down, move to the other arm. She spent more time covering and uncovering my limbs and applying oil and moving around the table than she actually spent massaging. And everytime she moved, something clanked or she bumped the table (which was rickety and actually squeaked A LOT!). At one point she banged something metallic into the table really hard. And then, instead of apologizing, she did it again a moment later! And she muttered to herself the whole time (lot of loud sighs and grunts), which was not relaxing! A couple of times she found one spot and really dug into it, until I had to tell her to stop, and then instead of stopping she continued to do it while explaining that I had a knot she was trying to work out. I finally had to tell her to leave the ""knots"" alone and that I just wanted to relax. After which she muttered three or four times that I had sensitive skin. It sounded like, ""your skin...your skin...your skin too sensitive..."" I think she realized that I was getting seriously annoyed with her, because she actually got better at the end and gave me a very good 10-minute back rub toward the end without any muttering! It was such a contrast from the earlier slacking off and banging around that I was really surprised. Then a really loud buzzer went off. I've only had masseuses use those loud buzzers to time themselves at supercheap reflexology places, never at a real spa. She then covered my back up and left. I'll also say that after I got dressed, I took a 3 minute call with a friend, went out, got my coat, used the bathroom, paid, and then looked at my watch and it was exactly 5pm, so this buzzer must have been set at 45 minutes or something...I still left her a $25 tip because I figure that it's not an easy living being a masseuse, and really the ultimate responsibility rests with the spa, who should screen and train their therapists better. By the way, when I complained about the squeaky table, they admitted that they'd given me one not usually used for massages because their other room was occupied by my friend. The clear solution to this would have been to ask me to wait for my massage, as I know my friend's appointment was 2 hours before mine--we had tiered it deliberately because they told us they couldn't accommodate both at the same time! They should not have used that table for any massage at all once they knew it squeaked.\r
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Edit to add: I'm deleting the original second part of this review because Keiko now says she received the whole tip I left her. Someone had simply forgotten to hand it to her. I will leave this comment in: I should mention that the tip ""envelopes"" were basically folded sheets of paper, and I did notice at the time that there was no way to seal them, unlike most spas where you could not only seal the envelope but also drop it into a slot for a box with that therapist's name. My advice for anyone going is to either give your tip to the therapist directly or tip via credit card - I usually like to leave cash but without lock boxes credit card tipping might be for the best.
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