Love Hotels in Japan: Q&A

One of the more exotic aspects of Japan are its "love hotels," private hotels that couples can go to in order to spend a few hours of quality time together if they don't have anywhere else to go. Based on "private inns" that were common in the Edo Period and official facilities set up during the Allied Occupation, love hotels are a huge industry in Japan. I decided to fire off an "ask me anything" question to the J-List Facebook page and see what questions people had. Here are some of them.

Q. What are they? How much do they cost?

A. Basically, hotels where couples can "rest" for 2-3 hours, or "stay" overnight. The cost is usually around $30-50 for a few hours or $80-130 for all night.

Q. Who uses them?

A. Everyone from couples in their 20s to married couples who live with their parents or children. Recently there's been a lot of use by "silver" couples who are still genki, and hotels are starting to embrace these customers by creating 'barrier free' hotel rooms. Though there's no doubt an occasional connection to "delivery health" and other thinly disguised prostitution-esque services, the hotels are surprisingly professional and legitimate.

Q. Can foreigners use them?

A. Sure, no one cares who uses them. If you're coming to Japan and want to give one a try, it would probably be a lot of fun. They're quite common in Tokyo, such as the Spain-zaka area of Shibuya or Uguisu-dani station. If you're outside a major city like Tokyo they can be harder to find, as they're usually placed on the edge of town, hard to get to if you don't have a car.

Q. What will I find there?

A. Competition has forced the hotels to become quite creative, and they offer different themes to couples, with everything from Disney and Hello Kitty themes to rooms with various costumes you can try on to at least one "Hotel California" style establishment. In addition to a vending machine selling ridiculously cute toys for couples, there's lotion and a condom, too, but the J-List staff tells me it's common sense to never use condoms from a love hotel as the previous person might have poked a hole in it as a joke. There are often exotic baths that can be as much fun to play in the main reason for going.

Q. How is privacy handled?

A. Since no one wants to see anyone else when visiting one of these places, hotels get creative here, too. You park your car in the space reserved for the room you want and go right into your room. Payment is handled by a machine that unlocks the door after you insert payment or else a pneumatic tube that delivers your payment to the front desk without you seeing anyone.

Q. How big is the industry?

A. At around $42 billion, the love hotel industry is around twice the size of the entire anime/manga industry. Being such a healthy area of the economy, it occasionally attracts interest by international hedge funds, but they usually can't get around the idea of investing money in a taboo industry. Incidentally, Nintendo famously operated a love hotel for a few years before settling on their current product line

Q. Any more information?

A. If you're curious about these love hotels, we've got a couple of cool photobooks on the site for you to check out.

Love hotels are one of the more mysterious aspects of Japan.

Catching Up with Anime: Kotoura-san

It happens every time: a new anime season is about to start, yet I'm still working through the last one. One show I've been plowing through lately is Kotoura-san, a fun series about a girl who's born with the ability to read people's 心 kokoro -- translatable as "hearts" or "minds" -- which leads to trouble (and more than a little slapstick comedy) since she can tell what everyone is thinking. (Warning, the first episode is quite laden with "feels" but the rest of the series is much lighter.) The word kokoro is one of my favorite Japanese words, representing the romantic and philosophical elements of a person's heart, essentially where one's mind is focused in the body. In Japan it's thought to be located in the chest, whereas most of us would consider the "mind" to be located in the head. The shows up in various places in the language, e.g. the eyes are thought to be the "mirrors of one's kokoro" (目は心の鏡 me wa kokoro no kagami), and someone with mental illness is said to have a 心の病 kokoro no yamai or "sickness of the kokoro." There's an insightful proverb on women which has served me well in my years of marriage: 女心と秋の空 onna-gokoro to aki no sora, which means "a woman's heart is like the sky in autumn, always changing and never the same" [so keep an umbrella handy].

I've been enjoying Kotoura-san, a fresh idea for an anime.

The J-List Spring Bento Sale is On Now

Spring is here, and that means a new start and trying new things -- like making beautiful bento from Japan! We're having a big sale on all bento boxes and kawaii bento accessories, plus everything in your kitchen. Want to score a great traditional bento box from Hakoya? How about a cute Pokemon or Totoro themed bento box? Or a cooker for making Takoyaki or Taiyaki as seen in anime? We've got it all in stock.

Fun With Japanese Companies

One unique aspect of companies in Japan is the way they do pretty much everything, without limiting themselves to one main area of business. Do you want to "reform" (remodel) your home? Panahome, the construction company operated by Panasonic, will be happy to help you, and you can get a Panasonic high-performance bicycle to go with it. When you think of Hitachi you think of consumer electronics, but they also make Japan's speedy bullet trains. Kawasaki makes trains too (the New York Subway cars are made by them) as well as ships, helicopters and of course motorcycles. Other companies to have surprising side-businesses include Toyota (they manufacture pre-fab homes under the Toyota Home brand), Mitsubushi (the 8th largest bank in the world is also a major supplier of military hardware), Sony (who sells life insurance) and Fuji Film (which used its chemical expertise to switch to from film to high-end make-up products). Japan's beer companies also manufacture a variety of beverages from Asian teas to health drinks, and Coca Cola even tried their hand at producing an alcohol-free beer for a short time.

Need a house? Have Toyota Home build one for you.

Learning to Mock Society with "Haganai"

I've been watching the second season of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, aka Haganai, aka I Have Few Friends, a surprisingly good show about a bunch of misfit high school students who don't have any friends, so they form a school "neighbor's club" in order to learn how to make some. (The joke is on them: they don't realize that they've already got great friends in each other.) One word that comes up a lot in the show is リア充 ria-juu, so I thought I'd talk about it a bit. Coined around 2005 on Japan's ubiquitous 2ch BBS, it's short for リアル充実組 riaru juujitsu-gumi or "those to live a satisfied, happy life in the real world." It's a catch-all (and somewhat mocking) term for anyone who leads a happy life with normal hobbies and healthy human relationships, especially those lucky enough to have a real girlfriend/boyfriend instead of having to make due with alternatives. The battle cry of Japan's hardcore otaku and Internet users is リア充は爆発しろ！ ria-juu wa bakuhatsu shiro! or "blow up all people who have happy sex lives."

Haganai is about high school kids who want to find friend.

Thoughts on Maids and Culture Shock

It's funny the way our "base culture" can shape the way we look at the world. The other day I came across a picture of a black couple from the U.S. posing ironically in front of what appeared to be scary guys in KKK hoods...but if course it was the cofradías (Brotherhood of Penitents) of Seville, Spain, whose unique costumes date back to the 14th century. It's similar to the minor shock Westerners get when they arrive in Japan and see swastikas printed on Japanese maps. The symbols (which are left-facing, the opposite of the ones we see on History Channel documentaries) are called manji and are an ancient symbol used in Buddhist and Hindu countries to denote the locations of temples. A few years ago my wife and children visited a friend in Kuala Lumpur, Malysia, staying at her house. The friend was quite wealthy and employed several maids to clean their house and cook, which caused some confusion with my daughter, who wondered why the women weren't wearing flamboyant uniforms modeled after 19th century French maids. To her, a maid is a kawaii female who serves coffee and cakes for her go-shujin-sama ("master"), maybe while wearing cat ears for extra cuteness. We all had a big laugh at this interesting example of culture shock.

Some thoughts on culture shock and maids.

See the J-List x Tamatoys Itasha at Anime Expo

We have great news for anyone who'll be attending Anime Expo this year. J-List and TamaToys have teamed up to make an awesome itasha anime car which we'll be displaying at our booth. TamaToys is the company that creates those awesome parody stress toys and innovative cosplay products, and we're happy to be their partners and creating this cool car. Come by and get your picture taken beside it!