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A Japanese Love Hotel
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago>I have to say: if Japan wasn’t already the most neurotically clean country I’ve ever been to I wonder if he's been to Singapore though? I felt like Japan was very clean, but Singapora was on a whole different level. And not just the "they banned gum" comments, but that I saw at 11:00pm people disappear and the cleaning crews come out pressure washing sidewalks and anywhere people might have been. Tokyo especially felt a LOT like NYC to me, except with much wider alleys, and cleaner. Singapore in contrast didn't feel 'real' at all, like if Disney made a whole country. Had a long layover in Japan, tried to stay in a Love Hotel as all we needed was 6 hours, but it wasn't $82, more like $120 and turned out we found a cheaper rate at a 'normal' hotel. Next time though!
- nihonde 8y agoJapan is clean from end to end, though. I’ve driven all day across the countryside many times and never seen much more than neatly-stacked supply storage in terms of clutter. Outside of Tokyo and Osaka, the other big cities like Nagoya are clean as a whistle, with every street swept clear every morning and all trash carefully monitored by a cadre of obaasan volunteers. This is the situation in every corner of Japan that I’ve ever seen. It’s truly “bottom-up” clean, which is remarkable and special.
- jpatokal 8y agoSo is Singapore. Then again, Singapore is only about 40 km end to end!
- cthalupa 8y agoThere's plenty of dirty if you go looking in Tokyo. I don't mind it at all, but if you go walking down the alleys near Shibuya or Shinjuku you can find plenty of garbage, etc. I had to dodge some fighting rats trying to get at an overturned garbage can the last time I went to the Mikkeller bar in Tokyo.
- fouc 8y agoI've been to Osaka & Singapore. I would consider Osaka to be much cleaner than Singapore.
- mikeash 8y agoI had to look it up and figured I should share: Singapore is roughly six times larger than Disney World.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoSo totally within reason for it to actually be Disney City. Hmm, well, I have my new conspiracy theory.
- mikeash 8y agoI would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
- InTheArena 8y agoI have a suspicion that if Disney hadn’t died, and actually built Epcot as a city, and not just a theme park, it would very much resemble Singapore and Dubai.
- InTheArena 8y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)
- Johnny555 8y agoTo clarify, that's the total land area of Disney World's Florida property, only a small portion is devoted to the theme parks: The Walt Disney World Resort is made up of 47 square miles of land…. or about 30,000 acres. Only about 1100 acres of that land is devoted to the 4 theme parks. In fact, with only 7,100 acres developed, there’s quite a lot of room for expansion! http://www.wdwradio.com/2005/02/wdw-history-101-how-to-buy-27000-acres-of-land-and-no-one-noticeq/ http://www.wdwradio.com/2005/02/wdw-history-101-how-to-buy-2... Another point of comparison: the city of San Francsico has a land area of 47 sq miles, so Singapore is about 6 San Francisco's.
- ubercow13 8y agoSingapore wasn't especially clean when I visited, outside of a few main pedestrian areas
- EliRivers 8y agoOne of our patron saints thought similarly; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Pena...
- csomar 8y agoThat would be the case only if you focused your walks on the CBD of Singapore. If you wonder a bit, it is not as clean and crisp as the Japanese. Also Singapore is only 5 millions. Compare that to the metro of Tokyo that has close to 40 millions. Japanese are really another breed.
- cryptonector 8y agoTokyo is very smelly on garbage night. Public restrooms in Singapore are not that great. Other than that those two cities are super clean.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoTokyo is only clean because they clean it every morning. Stay out before the trash gets picked up, it gets insanely trashed, especially on weekends. Probably due to the lack of trash cans.
- tokyodude 8y agoJapan isn't all that clean. Gees I don't know where people get this idea. Walk down Shibuya Center Street the road is disgusting. Plenty of other similar streets in Ikebukuro, Ueno, Roppongi, Kiyamachi, etc... Go in nearly any station, especially the older ones and there are years of dust piled up all over. Some are so bad I'm surprised it's not considered a fire hazard. The most interesting to me are toilets. I'd take a Japan over the USA for public toilets as the Japanese ones are less likely to be destroyed but at the same time it often looks like the staff is afraid to wash them correctly as they have extremely caked on stains. Here's a Starbucks. https://imgur.com/a/sDXuTCb https://imgur.com/a/sDXuTCb The "Japan is clean" meme makes all of these issues really stand out for me. I don't know where these dirty places are that Japan is being compared to but I don't feel like Japan sticks out as clean compared to say Silicon Valley or South Orange Country California or even Santa Monica/Brentwood. They seem about the same.
- Grue3 8y agoAround Shin-Imamiya station in Osaka where I stayed there's literally trash dumped on the streets and homeless people relieving themselves amongst it all. People just don't go anywhere far from the usual tourist spots.
- abdulmuhaimin 8y agoits the people and culture. I think Japan is clean due to the whole culture with regards to cleanliness. So if you see its clean, you know its not just on the surface clean or just hiding it. Singapore might be clean but its mostly due to the municipal/government and management. Once they are out of their country, you know their true nature. Im Malaysian btw, so Im familiar with Singaporeans in Malaysia I still think Singapore is not that clean (better than most country though).
- ufo 8y agoIn Brazil these things are known as "motels". I still have to think twice when I see a reference to the word in its original context, like "Bates Motel" in Psycho.
- fouc 8y agoIs that because people park their motor-vehicles there?
- gtirloni 8y agoI don't know how they started. They may have started as regular "motels" like in the US and then turned into love hotels because they were usually far away from downtown, near highways and that's a better place if you don't want to be seen with someone else? Nowadays "motel" equals "lovel hotel" in Brazil, without exception AFAIK. Cheap motels (in the US sense) that are near highways and are not "love hotels" will just call themselves "hotels" and avoid the sex-related stuff. There are plenty of those. I think it's also pretty common place for people who meet at night clubs and don't want to take their partners back home (in order to keep their privacy). They go to the motel and that's it. Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motel#South_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motel#South_America
- Phrodo_00 8y agoYeah, it's the same in Chile. Cheap hotels go by names that generally translate to "inn".
- OneWordSoln 8y agoAs I understand it, motel rooms have doors that open to the outside and hotel rooms connect to the inside of the building, i.e. motels have no atrium.
- coldtea 8y agoIn pure form maybe. In actual life lots of motels and motel chains have atriums and rooms that don't open to the outside.
- LarryL 8y agoI'm french, and live in France, near Paris. In France, there is only (AFAIK) _one_ love hotel (inspired by the japanese ones). It's pretty small and the rooms are not big at all, but okayish (I only visited once). What's interesting is the history of its creation: from what I've read, it was pretty hard to get the authorizations (which explains why there are not any others). Basically, this is the old B.S. about prostitution. Which is total hogwash because they check your ID when you go in, so it would be impossible for an escort to use it with more than a couple customers (and regular hotels are frequently used for escorting anyway so what's the difference?). Personally, I think that love hotels are a great thing, much better than a regular hotel, and MANY people would benefit from those. Especially people in alternative sexualities (like myself) for whom finding a place to have sex is often a serious problem: going to one partner's home is often seen as a risk for security & anonymity. BTW, there has also been recently (one year ago), the opening of a "sex doll brothel" in Paris, and they were also checked by the police... Seriously, a freaking SEX DOLL hotel! It's crazy how anything related to sex in any way creates so much problems.
- dayvid 8y agoSadly, I don't think love hotels would work in America. Too many people disrespect and trash public spaces. It's the same reason they don't have net cafes like they do in Japan (where you can informally crash and use the internet).
- roguecoder 8y agoBath houses for gay men worked similarly for years in the US.
- monksy 8y agoThey're still there as well. (Just not that common) I can think of at least 2 or 3 in Chicago.
- andrewflnr 8y agoI don't know exactly how common they were, but I've definitely been to an internet café in the US (in a very small town FWIW). AFAICT they're gone because they just don't make economic sense anymore with everyone having a WiFi device already.
- dustindiamond 8y agoI was wondering about the Slack emoji :love_hotel:, and now I know.
- g3ph4z 8y agoDiscord has same emoji. :love_hotel:
- ihuman 8y agoIts not just part of Slack or Discord's emoji set; its a standard Unicode emoji https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/ https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel/
- yorwba 8y agoAnd before that, it was in SoftBank's nonstandard extension to the Shift JIS encoding standard at code FBA1 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank%E7%B5%B5%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank%E7%B5%B5%E6%96%87%E5%...
- jerkstate 8y agoThese are big in Korea too, and the purpose isn't just infidelity as the article would have you believe. It is common to live with your family until marriage, and many Korean families outwardly hold traditional values of chastity until marriage. Families also tend to have a greater financial involvement (and therefore more influence over) in their childrens ability to rent a nice place because of jeonsei (very high security deposit - like a downpayment - in exchange for reduced rent), so it is in adult childrens best interest to keep up appearances with their parents. The average marriage age is 32 for women, 35 for men. So this means many, many years of adulthood dating where you cannot bring home a date to sleep with because you live with your parents. So love hotels are common in Korean nightlife districts and they are actually quite nice and cheap too. I stayed at some of them years ago and I recall they were around $75 per night, with free pirated DVD movies to borrow.
- Karlax 8y ago>the purpose isn't just infidelity as the article would have you believe. The article states "The clients are often people who live at home with their parents and just need some privacy." Still, they don't clarify this any further so your explanation is useful. As it happens, a similar situation to what you describe in Korea is also common in Japan.
- denimnerd42 8y agoThis is big in Argentina too. For similar reasons that children live with their parents into their 30s while saving for a place to live on their own.
- sho_hn 8y agoI used to live in an area in Seoul sandwiched between universities (신촌), in a nice enough high-rise apartment building at a main street, with a block full of love hotels behind it. My window was out back, facing hotel back entrances. It was generally quiet and uneventful, but super amusing on Valentine's Day nights: The entire street would basically be a column of taxis. They'd briefly be stopping, a couple would dash out to the safety of the hotel entrance, the column would advance, repeat.
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- rwmj 8y agoWebpage text doesn't render at all unless you enable some Javascript which is used to load fonts with no fall-back, and the fonts once loaded are also ugly and unreadable.
- miohtama 8y agoIf you need a hotel in Tokyo you can get a good deal on these love hotels compared to big name hotels. You do not need to go there for sex. They are available on hotels.com and bookings.com and such. The rooms are good size (in Tokyo hotel rooms tend to be small), you get a very luxurious bath room and bath utilities, you can order a tons of food through TV and of course you get some free condoms. Do not expect amazing lobby, though. Entrances are more hole-in-a-wall style. Locals seem to have a cultural taboo with these hotels, but as a Western traveler it is a pleasant and fun experience.
- bb2018 8y agoI once booked a hotel on Booking.com on a trip to Japan that was a great price for a king bed and a large room. There was no mention it was a love hotel. While I had no issue with it - my SO felt differently...
- Johnny555 8y agoLocals seem to have a cultural taboo with these hotels, but as a Western traveler it is a pleasant and fun experience. The Taboo seems to be against talking about them, not using them. My wife's brother got very flustered when the topic of love hotels came up in a conversation among family -- yet in another conversation (which involved much more alcohol), he revealed that he and his girlfriend/fiance were regular love hotel visitors before they had a place of their own.
- rangibaby 8y agoThe statement you quoted is such bs. Locals are the ones keeping love hotels in business after all. Like you pointed out, when it comes to a lot of things Japanese (east Asians?) will either change the subject or tell you what they think you want to hear, unless you are very close (or they are drunk).
- jpatokal 8y agoThere are a couple of catches to using love hotels as regular hotels though: * If you want a "stay" (overnight) instead of a "rest" (hourly), check-in times are late and check-out times are early, with steep hourly rates slapped on top if you overstay * It's often not possible to leave the room and come back (insert joke about in-and-out privileges here) * Rooms are often windowless All that said, they can be great deal. Here's a mildly tongue-in-cheek comparison of the JW Marriott Seoul vs a random love hotel in Cheonan: * $400 (rack) vs. $50 (rack) * Internet access $25/day vs In-room Internet PC for free * Two chocolates vs. two condoms on your pillow * Ordinary bathtub vs. heart-shaped jacuzzi in bathroom * Whisky and cognac vs. beer, soju and dildos in minibar * Porn costs $18/channel/day vs. three channels of it for free
- hmmmNo 8y agotl;dr Boring people, whom you wouldn’t try to fuck, sit around in a room made for fucking, and don’t fuck, seemingly mystified at the idea that people might consider fucking each other once in a while.
- artur_makly 8y ago'Telos' called here in Argentina.
- devy 8y agoLove Hotels are a hit in East Asian. So yes, it's popular China as well since at least 2016[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/chinas-love-hotel-boom-shows-nations-changing-attitudes-to-sex https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/chinas-love-ho...
- dav 8y agoI little bit of footnote history: back in 2003, in conjunction with the 1st International Moblogging Conference in Tokyo, a group of people (who being armed with pretty much the planets first camphones connected to the internet were also arguably the pioneers of instagram culture) held the 1st International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference. http://www.tokyotidbits.com/lovehotel/ http://www.tokyotidbits.com/lovehotel/ aka we were overexposing on the internet before it was cool ;)