sapporo, hotel rio

Last night we stayed a love hotel. We ALL stayed in a love hotel. I was keen to check one out because I wanted to write a travel story about these uniquely Japanese facilities. Love hotels are found in most major cities in Japan, usually on the road in or out of town. They are identifiable by their neon lights and suggestive names, ie Hotel Z, La Mer, Blue Nights, Hotel Rize, or the somewhat unoriginal, Hotel Love. They are actually one of the best accommodation options for us, as they are inexpensive and you pay for the room rather than per body. Usually each room has a particular theme - like an underwater theme or Arabian nights or some other period piece... whatever you want really, depending on how much you're willing to fork out. You can pay for a 'rest' ie three hours, or for a 'stay' ie the night, and if you check in after ten or eleven it is much cheaper. They're very popular and we saw stacks of sketchies sneaking in to them while we were out looking for one.

The late check-in is in part the reason that upon arriving in Sapporo - Japan's fifth largest city - we decided to while away the afternoon in a park, called Omori, i think, that runs east to west through the city, separating the north and south (the city is easy to get around in because it works on a grid system). We took it in turns to go and update our respective blogs (mine was the bathroom mission) and had a few drinks and just watched people walking by. Omori is where all Sapporo's major events are held, like public gatherings and meetings, etc. No hippies, thankfully. There wasn't a great deal going on on this particular Wednesday except for this guy dressed all in black who was rolling around on the grass with his mate, much to the delight of passing schoolgirls. We were befriended by two Japanese girls, Non and T, who didn't know each other but both came up to chat. We all ended up drinking and talking there for about four hours, till we decided to go and get some dinner at about eight.

It was good going with locals cause they knew the way to this secret ramen alley - every city in Japan is famous for a particular style of cuisine and ramen is Sapporo's - where i chose a restaurant based on its paisley green and blue seventies' style seats, which turned out to be a mistake as they only served pork. So I had to skull a jar of sake real quick on the way out the door to a restaurant across the way. The ramen was really, really good, and we had fun with the girls at dinner, after which it wasn't quite eleven so we went to a bar, which was a One Coin bar, meaning just that - you can drink whatever you want for a 500 yen coin ($6). Actually, we could have drunk whatever we wanted for two hours for 2000 yen, but we were already well, well, on our way by then (I suspect I was the worst off, thanks to another jar of sake at dinner. Hey, i dont drink beer and your options are limited otherwise).

(We're on leg 2 of another 3 x 3hr train journey back to Tokyo. James says we're going to start looking like shinkansen soon, a comment we don't fully understand...)

So we left, and Nom's friends had left her in town, so we offered for us to stay with us, and T wanted to come back for a drink, so the five of us walked the short distance to the love hotel zone. I had an military-style strategy in place about how we were going to sneak everyone in there, which Huey thought was a little over the top, but anyway... read on.

The first place, Hotel Mer, was too expensive, so we split up and NJ and T and I went in one direction and Hugh and Nom in another. They found a place first, for 7000 yen, which is a good price for the three of us as it's normally around 3000-3800 each for an inn or backpackers. They had walked so far we couldn't find them for ages, but we did eventually and Nom came down to get us. Love hotels are known for their discretion, given the nature of the business (they have license plate covers if you need them), so we thought we should be able to slip in in pairs fairly easily, up to Room 701. Not so. Nom insisted I go in with T, which I thought was a little weird (she was probably sweet on NJ), so we went first, and about five minutes later those two came up. We got busted right away - the phone was ringing as we walked into the room - and the guy at the desk said words to the effect to Nom that he knew there were four of us (there were five), so we had to either pay for another room or get out two people out in five minutes. We called back and asked for a refund to go and try somewhere else, but he said something about us being in there for half an hour already.... so blah, blah, blah, the girls had to go. We felt really bad abut the abrupt ending to the night but T lived in town so Nom was going to stay with her, so it was all kind of okay. Harshed our high though, and it was a real shame we didn't have someone who could read hiragana with us because there was a telephone-size karaoke book, massive TV and two mics in there. Ack, well, you can't win them all, so we all crashed out in the king size bed. A strange end to a great day. Check-out was at a very civilsed eleven, so we got to shower and use all their free stuff before splitting and doing a quick sakura sweep on the way back to the train station. I'll do a separate post for all those ones, Jesse.

I sat and wrote a description this morning - after my gentle morning-show-guided tai chi - in case I do write a story about these hotels of love ... one i get paid for, I mean. :) I'll copy it below, with some censoring in the name of taste as my nephews read this blog...

HOTEL RIO: ROOM 701
Directly inside the door there is a king-size bed. At the end of the bed there is a massive TV - how big I don't know - maybe 100cm? Below it is a video player, and set into the side of the faux marble cabinet are two karaoke mics. There's a large karaoke book on the coffee table. There's also a huge stereo and two remotes which between them could launch a rocket into space, but we can't work. The walls are eggshell, with a green glitter pinstripe. The bedhead is two-tone suede: blue and mauve, and on each side there is a ... lamp. The overhead lights are white and red and spotlights. On one side on the bed, near the window, there is a bedside table. On it are ... plus a telephone, and a writing pad with loose sheets rather than a whole pad you can steal. There's a pen and lighter with Hotel Rio's dodgy logo on them.

On the other side of the bed there is a small two-seater blue vinyl couch and in front of it is a faux-marble coffee table. On it is an plastic binder folder with an extensive food menu, also in Japanese. Behind the coach on the opposite wall are two cupboards, one containing a microwave and small bar fridge. The microwave is empty. Inside the small bar fridge there are 14 separate compartments each containing a drink of some kind. Can't read most of them because it is written in hiragana, but can see ice tea and coke and lemon coke and something called Calypso. I can't make out what are in most of the freezer compartments but I can see a Haagen-Dazs Crispy Sandwich, which looks vanilla.

In the other cupboard there are some coat hangers, a couple of shelves holding some tea cups and a couple of elaborately overdone glasses on a stand with a gold corkscrew, and an urn. There's a basket with coffee and tea stuff, and nuts and nibblies. Below it, is a small vending machine named Fashion Shopping which contains curry noodles, baby oil, nail polish, contact-lens cleaner, a 1000-yen phonecard and some breath mints, among other things.

The bathroom offers the chance of a Japanese-style bath with a small footstool, bucket, and shampoo, conditioner and body wash. The shampoo and conditioner are for damaged hair. There's the option of a showerhead or a tap. The bath is a spa, deep and with an option for a whirlpool. .... (we didn't have a bath). The tiles are a dull pink with a flower pattern border running through the middle, the type you would expect to see in the bathroom of an English pub. On the bathroom sink there's facewash, toothbrush holders and a basket containing two toothbrushes, a hairbrush, showercap, washcloth, razor, hair gel and hair wax, all wrapped in separate Disney-character-imitation plastic wrappers. There's a hairdryer, which doesn't work, and a curler which does - just about everything you could possibly need should you find yourself staying over unexpectedly. Except deodorant.

PICS: no particular order (there's no love hotel ones 'cause they all turned out too dark or too flashed out)

* crazy dancing man in Omari
* dusk in Omari
* Sapporo - Suskino - at night
* ordering our ramen... T is on Hugh's left, Nom on his right
* me, NJ, T and Hugh