Japanese working hours and household arrangements where children, parents and grandparents typically all live together makes it difficult for couples of any age to have some private time. Hence dotted around most Japanese cities you will find streets of love hotels. Looking like a scaled down Las Vegas these establishements provide guests with a potential getaway whilst maintaining the upmost discretion. Rooms are charged by the hour, although if what Ive just said is true then this could potentially be 58 minutes waste of money......
Apparently it is also possible to hire larger rooms for parties with karaoke machines and the like. So last night a few of the guys from work suggested we hire out a room for everyone in an attempt to demystefy the whole thing. I joined the scouting party to try and find one that would accomodate us.
Inside each one is a panel with all the available rooms, you pick one you like then a machine prints out the keycard. When your done you put the card in the machine and pay. No human interaction required. However we never got out of the lobby in any of them without being harrased by the manager. It seems five half cut foriegn guys seems to be a problem. We were told lots of different excuses such as we were too many or too male. One guy even told us if we returned with at least one girl we could have a room, though that just sounds even more questionable to me.
The result: no love hotel party. However we did manage to get a glimpse into this bizarre world and hopefully no-one from work saw us!
This one had some sort of cave theme. You could purchase little gifts for our loved one from the glass displays.
One of the rooms in this hotel even featured a cage....
You can drive right up to a bay that leads directly to each room in this one. Even more discrete!!
We managed to get a few games of pool in this lobby before being chucked out.
In a not-so-clever wordplay this one was called C-Lover and was a bizarre mix of Irish/Caribbean theme
This one is called "The Elegance Inn" as so well depicted by the giant image of Shrek.
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