Most anyone who’s into some sort of Japanese pop culture knows about the existence of Love Hotels. Are you in the mood for a quickie and need some accomodations? Indiscriminate lover? Have a whore? Curious at the, from an American’s perspective, novelty of having hotels blatantly dedicated to sex? If you gave a yes to any of these questions, love hotels are for you.

An overnight stay in a Tokyo love hotel looked to bottom out at about 6,000 yen (about $55). For a decent hotel, that’s not bad at all. Heck, with two people it even beats the price of staying at a hostel or capsule hotel. Bargain travelers beware! Of course, why would you even want to spend the night? Heck, you can stay for just a few hours for the $30 or so range, and some hotels even go down to the half hour range for the oh-so-low price of only about $8. That’s a bargain for a quick little romp.

With me living in this country and all I thought it would be a damn shame to skip out on these deals, so on this weekend’s trip to Tokyo Beth and I decided to forego everyone else’s idea of a business hotel and find our own little cozy love shack. We knew of two famous love hotel districts in Tokyo: Shinjuku’s Kabukicho and Shibuya’s Dogenzaka. On a prior visit to Tokyo we had wandered around Kabukicho to see what they had to offer, so for this weekend we went to the then-unexplored Dogenzaka.

Once you’re in the correct district and wander off the main road a bit you’ll begin to see the tell-tale signs of a love hotel disctrict–a large concentration of gaudily-constructed buildings with a sex shop placed between them every block or two. Their architecural style, that range from futuristic to Victorian to futuristic Victorian to candy bubblepop pink Victorian, all with loads of neon, contrast greatly against both Tokyo in general and themselves.

They also have have signs out front advertising their rates and hours. The “Rest” (a few hours in the daytime) is the aforementioned $30-40 or so, while the “Stay” (overnight, usually from around 11pm to 10am) run about the Rest fee. They also advertise many of the styles of rooms and features within. I noticed that most room have large-screen TVs, and many features PS2s and karaoke because there’s nothing like sexing up your woman then relaxing with a PS2 controller in hand.

Once you enter a hotel there’s usually a panel near the door that has photos of all of the different rooms within the hotel. Availbale rooms are lit up, unavailable rooms aren’t. It’s pretty simple. It’s quite enjoyable to simply wander into the many hotels and see what all of their rooms look like. Unfortunately, it seems that the truly hardcore-themed rooms are down in the Kansai region (as in, not Tokyo). A few hotels did have some nice themed rooms, and eventually we found a bondage-themed room complete with cuffs on the walls and a dungeon-esque asthetic. This was early in the night, so we moved onward to see what else we could find.

Unfortunately after half an hour more of wanderings we decided that that one was our best bet, but sadly we couldn’t remember which hotel it was at. We ended up settling on a different hotel that had a futuristic theme. Luckily we remembered which hotel that one was at, so we went in and purchased a room.

To purchase a room you find your choice on the lit panel inside and push the button on the panel for your desired room. This ‘reserves’ your room and the light goes out so no one else can pick it. You then go to the window, state the room number you chose, and pay. There are no forms to fill out and no exchange of information. I said the room I wanted, paid in cash, and received my key. Chalk up a win for discreetness.

Once up in our room we had a look around.

TV, fridge filled with booze, and a tea set in between

The front of the room featured a nice flat-screen TV and a vending machine fridge stocked with various alcoholic drinks (400 yen/drink). Next to the bed was a control panel center that controlled the many lights, the room temperature, the radio, set the vibration for the bed, and had a clock/charge display that let you know how much you were being charged. Next to the control panel were the final two essentials: a box of tissues and a single condom, and after seeing the size of Japanese condoms I most certainly believe all of stories of Asian people being quite small down there.

The vibrating bed by the room’s control panel

Our specific room was special for its black lighting and the murals of planets that adorned the walls. It also had a plethora of dimmable lights around the room so you could perfectly set your mood lighting. The radio came with literally hundreds of stations and was hooked up to both the nice stereo system built into the ceiling and the bed. Yes, the bed. One of the sets of controls allowed you to set the intensity of the bed vibrations, which went in tune with the music. We found the anime music station. There’s nothing like being with your woman on a bed vibrating to anime tunes while bathed in black lights and surrounded by murals of planets. It was truly atmospheric.

In other words, it was a very enjoyable night.

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