A Love Hotel is a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. A Love Hotel is a motel that you can rent either by the hour or by the night. Hotels like this exist in many other countries, but a Japanese Love Hotel is different because couples go there without worrying about any of the stigmas that by-the-hour motels have back home or in any other country. Love Hotels just don't have the seedy reputation in Japan that they have in any other country. They're just thought to be clean and practical. I read that people in Japan are supposed to call Love Hotels "rabuho" (An Aside: Japan loves abbreviations. Convenience store = conbini, Personal computer = pasocom, even Brad Pitt = Brapi and I really wish I were joking about that one) but I have never heard anyone call a love hotel a love hotel. They're just motels. Japanese people are really nonchalant about the hotels in their country that foreigners find so fascinating. Capsule hotels. yawn. Themed Love Hotels. Just another motel.
The reason why Love Hotels are so popular is because most young Japanese people live with their parents. It's common to live with mom and dad until you get married or move to a big city because of work. It's very, very normal and common for a 28 year old to still live with his/her parents. That fact, combined with the notoriously thin walls and small rooms in Japanese apartments, make Love Hotels a great option for most people. When I first came to Japan, I used to ask my friends about Love Hotels because they were such a curious novelty for me, but now I don't notice them anymore, mainly because no Japanese people care about them. Every Japanese person who has ever had a girlfriend / boyfriend has gone to one and apparently they're just as exciting as a regular old Midwestern Motel. Soap, shampoo, complimentary toothbrushes and tea, a bed, a toilet. Nothing special. Except Hotel Christmas. This place looks like the place in the North Pole where Santa's elves build the toys. It's huge and colorful and looks like a Toys R Us store more than a by-the-hour motel. I can't imagine anyone over the age of eight really wanting to go in there. 
So I know what you want to know. Why is Christmas sexy in Japan? In other countries, Christmas isn't sexy at all. In fact, I think it's basically the least sexy of all holidays. It's a children's holiday and a day for families to spend time together. Stories about Santa and Jesus. Singing carols in a group at care homes. Nothing is less sexy than children and the elderly. But in Japan, Christmas is a kind of Valentine's Day. Christmas has been marketed in Japan as a day for couples to exchange presents, eat "Christmas cake" together (not quite sure what that looks/tastes like) and spend a really romantic night. Back home, if you spend Christmas Eve in a cheap sex-motel, you are likely addicted to speed or glue. But in Japan, good luck finding a room on Xmas Eve. Alternately, though, New Years Eve is probably the most romantic / hedonistic holiday of the year back home. Everyone kisses everybody at midnight, nostalgia and freshness, etc etc etc. But in Japan, New Years Eve is a quiet time for family. Everyone wakes up early in the morning on New Years Day to go visit a shrine and wish for good luck in the new year. The entire family eats soup together and spends the day in quiet relaxation. Far different from the hangovers that a lot of Western people use that day off work to recover from.Anyway, I need to know what is in Hotel Christmas. If you've been inside Hotel Christmas and have pictures of it, please send them to me so that I can share them with everyone else.
12 comments:
One of my Japanese friends told me that the average "Christmas Cake" looks and tastes like the Western version of fruitcake.
Hi there, Julie.. :).. I am Denver from the Philippines...in one boring afternoon at my office, i decided to read Japanese poets in English..and i found your blog..and i started reading without stoppage (it's an exaggeration actually, i did stop)..but eventually i became addicted to your site and would always visit it once i hit the Internet. keep on writing! Your one true gift to humanity... :)
By the way, i hope it is okay with you.. i posted your blog link at my site...you can visit my site as well should you like...and critique my works...i write poems and super short fictions... ..thank you... :) have a great teaching day!
Hehehehe Christmas in Japan makes me smile. I spent last Christmas there with my host family. They made a really lovely effort getting out reall old christmas decorations and paty hats so me and my boyfriend would feel at home. They were very suprosed when we gave them presents :P. We had fried chicken and cake. They christmas cake I had was like a creamy sponge with fruit on it. Not sure if that is what everyone eats on christmas.
I like that you wrote about my "one true gift to humanity" in a post about Japanese love hotels. Ha. But thank you for the kind words. I am glad you like my site.
Clara! Yeah, I forgot to mention that in this post. Japanese people eat fried chicken on Christmas. Actually, they usually go to KFC. That's for two reasons. One is because they know that Westerners eat turkey on Christmas and chicken is a little like turkey. The other reason is that Col Sanders looks like Santa Claus! That is the funniest reason. They even dress him up in December. Outside KFC fast food shops there are statues of Col Sanders and during Christmastime, they put a little red suit and hat on him.
It's interesting to see how things are watered down and changed when they pass from country to country. I guess it's comparable to the yoga or zen craze in the west. "Zen for Dummies" books or 10 minute yoga on the go or suburban housewives talking about arranging the living room "fang shwee" style. It's just that way.
Yeah I saw the Col. Sanders when I was in Osaka. I think I have a picture of him somewhere. It was a little bit creepy! I thought it was mostly just KFC cashing in on the holiday. Thanks for the info. I asked my host family about it but their english and my japanese wasn't good enough to try and explain properly!
christmas to me is, well, just about EVERYTHING. i am obsessed with christmas, so reading this was very, very interesting.
it's funny- i have several japanese friends but none of them have ever told me about japanese christmas traditions.
i can't believe a lot of them go to KFC for christmas dinner! that seems so ... NOT japanese to me :/
hehe.
That is so interesting. Travel helps you learn a lot about your own country, too. You have Japanese friends but they didn't tell you about the KFC and Christmas cake because they probably didn't think it was worth mentioning. I think it's cool how whenever I tell anyone I'm from Canada, they first thing they say is "Aurora!!" and ask if I've ever seen the Aurora Borealis (Northern lights... most Canadians don't care about it and have never seen it and some Canadians don't even know the phenomenon by it's real name, just by the name "Northern Lights" but it's famous in Japan and people love it. I saw it once. It was awesome, but I had no idea it was so big in Japan.)
If I ever mention India to a Japanese student, one of the first things anyone says is "Zero, Zero" because apparently it's common knowledge in Japan that India invented the number Zero. Most Canadians don't know that. I didn't know that and I read about India all the time.
So we get all interested in things like Love Hotels and Christmas Cake but Japanese people are just yawning over those things... travel is so interesting.
How about a little investigatory visit as I am intrigued as well. When shal we go check it out?
that hotel is just so cute!
do they have the love chair in japan?
the bets about love hotels, is they are cheaper than regular hotels and most of the time cuter with heart shaped bed and the classical window in the bathroom!
check out www.lovehoteljapan.blogspot.com for lots of articles about sex in Japan! It's written by a foreign girl about her Japanese boyfriends.
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