Using Love Hotels in Japan

If you are visiting Japan staying at a love hotel instead of a traditional or business hotel can be a fun and economical way to spend a night (or afternoon) in Japan.

I’ll start out with describing some of the reasons NOT to stay at a love hotel, then move on to the positives and how to.

Here are the negatives to consider just so we can get them out of the way:

• Many of them will be in seedier parts of town
• Some of the people using them may not be the upper scale clientele you are used to sharing a hotel with
• Don’t be surprised if you see some big time drunkenness if you go at night
• There are rumors of video cameras in some of them (not just for surveillance)
• A lot of the rooms will smell like cigarette smoke
• Be careful of the pricing schemes… it’s very easy to walk out having paid more than you anticipated. Feel free to call the front desk and make sure of the price somehow.
• The good ones (or cheap rooms) may fill up quickly on weekends.

Here are the positives:

• A relatively cheap place to stay for the night, many of them not even exceeding 10,000 yen (about US$100)
• You can just go for a few hours in the afternoon to catch up on sleep, take a shower, or sing karaoke for a few thousand yen.
• Most rooms have (as I mentioned above) KARAOKE!
• You can get a room with a jacuzzi or sauna
• Even if there’s no jacuzzi, they often have baths much bigger than what you’ll get in a regular hotel
• If you are going to use the hotel for its originally intended purpose (let’s refer to it as “love”), most hotels provide one or two pieces of protection
• If you are not going to use the hotel for its originally intended purpose (“love”), consider them amenities and get one or two pieces of protection for free
• Most rooms are big and roomy with large sized beds and a little desk
• Most have cable tv, not just the adult stuff but many will have CNN and movie channels as well. Many of them also let you borrow a DVD player and DVDs free of charge.

There are tons of love hotels in Japan and all of them have different features and room types. Many of them have “themes” like Christmas or Europe or Pirates.

So here’s some basic information about love hotels:

How to find them:

• I think you’ll know them when you see them. Kind of wild looking with some kind of theme or something. If you see a glowing santa or a gorilla climbing up the side of a hotel, there’s a good chance it’s a love hotel.
• A love hotel will often have  a crazy name, usually English or French or a mix of both.
• Hidden entrances and parking lots where cars’ license plates are obstructed from view are sure signs.
• Some of them will describe themselves as boutique hotels or love hotels, you can also find them in the yellow pages.

I have heard that some hotels turn away male same-sex couples, but often the reason given is that they might frighten other customers. They don’t want a bunch of guys hanging around making trouble for couples, looking for cheating girlfriends, or just hanging out. On the other hand if you promise to go in discreetly and leave discreetly there shouldn’t be a problem.

I have actually been on my way to a sports tournament with a car load of five guys. All the hotels were taken (we hadn’t anticipated a convention in town). We called the love hotel and asked if they wouldn’t mind if five big guys took one of the remaining rooms. (Three non-Japanese guys, and two Japanese guys).

The guy said it would be no problem, but we had to wait in the parking lot until other couples had left the entrance area. He also asked us to check out by 7am the next morning so we wouldn’t accidentally meet other couples. He divided the charge for a room in half and made that the per person charge. We bought some beer at the nearby convenience store and ended up singing karaoke and partying all night for about 6,000 yen (US$60) each.

I’ve also stayed with platonic female friends before. Two women usually have no problem getting a room, however you should consider the safety issues involved (see the negatives listed above).

How to get a room:

• Usually, when you walk in you’ll see a board with pictures of the available rooms lit up.  Pictures of the rooms in use will be darkened.
• When you choose a room, you may then proceed to a front desk clerk (often an older woman), or if it’s a higher tech type place arrows may guide you to the elevator and subsequently to the room.
• Once in the room the timer starts (unless you’re on overnight time or afternoon free time). Some hotels may have a cost counter near the front door where you can see the cost go up in real time.
• Generally you pay on the way out. Some hotels do it with vacuum tubes, some do it at a desk (the older woman mentioned above).
• Some hotels lock from the outside, but pretty much every hotel wants you to call the front desk when you are ready to check out so that they can organize the flow of people while maintaining privacy.

Love hotels tend to seem seedy, but there are legitimate uses for them here. If you have a lot of kids, live in a nuclear family, or for some other reason don’t have enough rooms in the house for the people who live there, even a married couple will want a little private time away from the family.

If you are a young couple, dating or engaged, often your only option for private time is to get a hotel room for a few hours.

There are point cards and other membership plans for frequent users, and I want to believe that most of them are legitimate businesses, but please be careful when you use them.

I want to also reiterate what I said above about the price. Please be sure you know what you are going to pay, and don’t be afraid to check (even if you don’t speak Japanese it may be worth the effort).

I’ve used love hotels as a cheap and relaxing place to stay in the past. If you want a nice bathtub or karaoke and a big tv, they can be a very good option, just be careful, and if you feel uncomfortable about a place it may be best to trust your gut instinct. If you can’t relax, there’s no point in staying there!

The picture above is of a room in a love hotel in Ikebukuro in Tokyo (called Hotel Aroma). You can stay overnight in that room for 8,800 yen a night during the week, or 12,500 yen on weekends, this is a relatively expensive hotel in a relatively expensive area.

There are a myriad of ways to look up love hotels online if you can use a little Japanese, if you can’t all you have to do is walk around some of the downtown areas, or hop a cab and ask the driver.

If you have any questions, please ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. Also, any additional useful advice for readers is welcome.