~Memories~ Days – Love Hotels and pretty red lights…
Posted on | April 23, 2008 | 8 Comments |
Since I spend most of my time harping on about various kinds of Japanese animated pornography, it may not surprise you to learn that Japan’s cities have a burgeoning real life sex industry as well as its more virtual one…
Those of you who have read my Hentai Dictionary will be aware of some of the more exotic services on offer at the various “soaplands”, which display themselves innocuously as only costing 10000yen for 30 minutes. Here is a picture of one I found in the red light district in Higashi Ikebukuro – note the anime style girl saying “Yay” in the bottom right corner – she made me laugh…
It is an interesting loophole in the Japanese immigration laws that allows thousands of overseas sex workers into the country on infinite visas amusingly named “Entertainment Visas”. Most of this trafficking occurs from Thailand and Cambodia via your friendly Japanese local crime syndicate known as the Yakuza. The government, far from being powerless to stop them probably has a few shady fingers in various shady pies and none of the previous prime ministers have had the balls to stand up to these powerful crime rings.
Along with these soaplands, the red light districts are filled with only a few building types – pachinko and slot machine parlours, naughty video and peep show shops and love hotels.
Love and I really like the love hotels.
Love hotels are a slight oddity probably unique to Japan. They consist of a hotel, usually with a fairly over-the-top frontage with fantasy or foreign themes. In the lobby there is a light board with pictures of all the available rooms (usually much more boring than the frontage would suggest) and push buttons. To select a room, a button is pushed and a friendly attendant partially concealed behind a screen (but who usually pokes her head underneath anyway) charges you and gives you the key.
The idea sprang out of the need for Japanese couples to get away from their families to have their own “private time”. In the old days, it was common for even newly weds to be living with the family of one of the parents. This, combined with the fact that most of the walls in Japanese houses are made of paper makes for some extremely quiet lovemaking. Not very romantic…
From this simple concept, the love hotel has grown into the vast districts and alleyways found in Shibuya and Osaka where literally hundreds of them jostle for room and customers as young and slightly-more-age-mismatched couples wander slightly drunkenly from various entertainment establishments looking for some quiet time to conduct their illicit liasons.
In our time in Japan, Love and I visited a fair few and stayed in three.
The first love hotel we visited was a boring cheap one in Ikebukuro. That’s enough said about that one really ^_^
The second one was the hotel Adonis in Osaka which was lovely. Different to their Tokyo counterparts, some Osakan love hotels have a lot of themed rooms, not to mention a fair selection of S & M machinery. (since Osaka seems to be a lot more liberal in this respect than Tokyo). Our room’s theme seemed to be red. The most amusing part of the room was probably the single tube of lube left in the sextoy vending machine…
The last one we stayed in also partly out of necessity since we had not booked anywhere else to stay that evening >_< and turned out to be a blacklight hotel in Shibuya with various designs stencilled in UV-fluorescent paint on the walls and terrible Japanese porn on the TV. We chose the seasonal cherry blossom theme which was very pretty. You can tell that this hotel was upmarket because the room featured a window. Unfortunately it looked onto a wall.
From this, we made a few conclusions:
1 – Osaka’s Love hotel district is far more exciting than any of the Tokyo ones
2 – Even boring love hotel rooms are inherently exciting
3 – Love would like to move into Adonis (in Osaka) if we are going to be working in Japan.
4 – Do blacklights really show up sperm like on CSI? If so, ew.
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8 Responses to “~Memories~ Days – Love Hotels and pretty red lights…”
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April 23rd, 2008 @ 11:11 pm
Hmm. I’ve stayed at a few hotels which suffered from the very same issues which brought about the development of the Love Hotel concept in the first place, but then I guess you get the wall thickness you pay for.
In any case, thanks for the interesting write up and the pictures – rather informative.
April 24th, 2008 @ 12:50 am
Yuribou, you’re one of the few anime/manga fans who actually have sex. I envy you ;_;
April 24th, 2008 @ 1:28 am
1- That’s very interesting and good to know, should I ever get to go to Japan and score some hot barely-legal booty.
2- I would assume so.
3- It would get WAAY to expensive
4- Yes. Yes it does.
April 24th, 2008 @ 7:10 am
Don’t you have to spray something on the mess first or put on special glasses or something for number 4 to work?
April 24th, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
Quite interesting and entertaining. I agree with Pillowcase on #4.
April 25th, 2008 @ 1:05 am
Number 4 is why it would make me nervous to stay anywhere in which people were expected to get it on.
April 27th, 2008 @ 12:59 am
Pillowcase: Not always. Really it depends on the fluid, age of stain, and a few other things. Luminol (The chemical you’re thinking of) is primarily used for blood stains, which don’t show up under blacklight very well. And the glasses are to help filter out excess light. If you do it in a dark/sealed room, you don’t really need them. Luminol does help with most biologicals, so it certainly won’t hurt anything.
Luminol at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminol
Black lights uses at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light#Uses
June 11th, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
“4 – Do blacklights really show up sperm like on CSI? If so, ew. ” This scares me…