On March 18th, pop singer Hikaru Utada has activated her Twitter account for the first time in 1.5 months. And one of her surprisingly rare tweets involved her confessing that "I have never been to a love hotel."
Utada of course has been famous since a young age, making her debut at 15. Even wandering the street is impossible, let alone a secret tryst at a love hotel. She would have been carefully managed by her agency and label, plus she was married to filmmaker Kazuaki Kiriya from 2002 to 2007.
Since then she has maintained a lower profile, living partly in London, where she met ...
It seems the foreign media has just discovered what a love hotel is.
Only the other day we blogged about an article that held the love hotel industry up as a shining light in Japan's economic doldrums.
Now AFP have followed up with this recent video report to accompany the same article in which an intrepid camera crew interview a hotel manager about the love hotel system.
Pressing buttons, pay, get the key and then go up... "Discretion is guaranteed."
There is a nice touch where the camera lingers over a catalog advertising some sexy costumes.
It also features footage ...
While much of the economy is struggling to find any positive effects from PM Abe's fiscal policies, and consumers are dreading April and the impending raising of consumption tax, there is at least one industry that seems unaffected by the financial doldrums.
Love hotels are doing big business.
As we know, sex always sells. It doesn't matter what the crisis is, people will always pay for sex -- whether that is with their partner, material for their own private fun, or to hire the services of a professional.
An AFP article has picked up on the love hotel phenomenon as a sign that ...
Saitama might well have a reputation as a boring suburb of Tokyo but some places aren't as dull as they sound.
Japan might also be a nation with 25% older population but the seniors can't be accused of being anything but active.
One man was recently arrested for being a little too vigorous, in fact. 64-year-old Yoshio Shimazaki of Utsunomiya in Tochigi had some urges and knew where to do go to sort it out. He went to Saitama.
In November 2011 at a love hotel in Kawaguchi City he gave a female high school student ¥20,000 and then had her perform bondage play with him. At the time the ...
Recently the netizens of Japan got a chance to have an online Q&A with someone who used to work as a cleaner at a love hotel. Here's a summary of what they were asked and how they responded.
The person claimed to be in charge of making up the beds after guests were finished with their stay.
Q: There's no cameras, right?
No, only in the corridors and parking lot.
Q: Did you ever bump into guests?
Sometimes. But usually we were hiding away somewhere until the guests left.
Q: Can you hear the groans?
If the inner was left open we could hear. We could hear in front of the door.
Q: Is ...
Love hotels. Sites for naughty sex between adulterous couples, couples who still live at home, and of course plenty of liaisons with prostitutes too.
A little known fact is that one in four occupants of a love hotel is now said to be over 65, and the love hotels are adapting to these seniors.
With the Baby Boomer generation hitting retirement, seniors mean big business for everyone.
Seniors, though, naturally like to take things easily, so many hotels are offering longer versions of the so-called two or three-hour "rest" periods, so seniors can get the daytime cheap rate at their own ...
Our peers at fellow erotic blog Tokyo Reporter recently posted an interesting extract from a Japanese tabloid where a lady with a ten-year career in cleaning love hotels recounts some curious episodes.
“Once in a room I found an A4 size notebook left behind by a customer. It contained a written exchange between a man and a deaf women. First they introduced themselves. She wrote that she was working as an instructor for a school for the deaf, divorced, with one child.
“The two had apparently met via an ‘encounter site’ online.”
A woman using the pseudonym Kana Kogure, a 10-year ...
Ever fancied living in a Tokyo love hotel? One company, Tokyo Style CC, offers you the chance!
We just spotted this story over on the blog JapanTrends.com. Tokyo Style CC has converted a small, tucked-away love hotel in east Tokyo into a customized, designer set of apartments.
Although Shibuya and its love hotel hill are likely more conspicuous for foreigners, there are actually far more hotels in more dubious areas like Nippori.
Many of these are pretty run-down places and you wouldn't catch young couples dead in them.
You can see the results of the renovation ...
Japan is well-known for having lots of modern "religious" groups (shinshukyo), organizations that are registered as religions and pay none of the nation's hefty corporation tax.
Most are kind of vague spin-offs of Buddhism but spend most of their time dabbling in business, such as schools, baseball teams, golf clubs, real estate, health insurance and so on. Rather than believers in the strict sense of the word these religions have members, who are often employed by the organization as well.
Occasionally these are notorious, such as Aum, the cult group which carried out the sarin attack ...
Last week we saw really stormy weather in Japan, not just once but twice. Windows smashed. Trash was blowing everywhere.
One unlikely side effect of the weekday storm is that there were more guests than usual at Tokyo's love hotels. Yes, this kind of unusual weather is the perfect excuse for some hanky panky.
On April 3, many people were advised to leave work early but some took a different approach to seeking shelter from the forces of nature.
While most girls would have been worrying about the state of their hair and clothes due to the wet and blustery weather, the excuses the guys ...
