Surviving in Japan. Lesson 1: Staying in a Hotel (or, Of Love and Small Spaces)

If you’re visiting Japan, especially when you’re a loser and don’t have any friends in Japan, you will probably need to sleep in a hotel. Keep in mind these few tips so that you stay safe in the wilds of Japan.

1: If the hotel has hourly rates, you might think about staying at another hotel. This isn’t like getting gas in Canada, there’s a reason.

2: If the hotel doesn’t have a front desk or doesn’t allow for reservations, you probably are in the wrong hotel.

3: If the hotel mentions water, or says ロヴェホテル (Love Hotel), then you should get a new place.

You might be wondering why there are so many of these “special” hotels and what they’re actually for. No Timmy, these hotels are not for diseased ridden hookers, but regular people like you and me. Japan is a country where lots of people live really close together. It’s also not uncommon in many places for entire families (from grandfather to grandsons) to live in one house. So where does the older grandson (and mom and dad, they’re still hip with it) go when they’re going to get nookie? A love hotel, of course.

This, of course is not the only reason why love hotels are used. Japanese businessmen sometimes have mistresses and use love hotels to be discreet (or so they think. The wives know what the hell is going on). And, of course, they’re used for one-night stands.

So now that you’ve managed to have a giant orgy with a gaggle of Japanese sluts at a love hotel get a normal hotel room, let’s go up and take a look.

Hopefully you weren’t expecting much, ‘cause you didn’t get very much. Of course, this being Japan, the room is downright miniscule (they invented the idea of the capsule hotel and they fit the entire population of Australia into one city). In your room you have a bed, a desk, a tv, and a bathroom, all tiny.

You’re paying 8,000 yen for this.

The television gets 15 channels, 12 for free, and only one of them is in English. The other three channels are pay channels; only one of the three is a movie channel (can you guess what the other two are?). The desk, has a telephone, a teapot, and……. a Gideon Bible.

It follows you wherever you go!

So how about the bathroom, you’re saying? Well, let’s open the door and find out. Sweet Jesus, what is that! That is a toilet (or it was before the horrible accident that disfigured it. The Japanese took it in, repaired it, and gave it an internal bidet). It knows when you are sitting on it and fills up its water basin while serenading you with the best of Bowie at the same time.

Everything in Japan has something electronic in it, everything.

This, my gentle American, is the Japanese hotel. You might never stay here, but since I have it’s like you have.