Have you always wanted to own a love hotel?
Now you can! And for just ¥88 million (a bit less than an average newly built condo in Tokyo costs).
The two-floor hotel, which is located a short distance from the beach and an hour's walk from Atami Station, is currently for sale.
The building is 728.65 square meters (the land is a bit bigger, at 999.46 square meters), and was built in 1985, which would make it positively ancient in Tokyo but not too shabby in a regional place like Atami.
Best of all, it is designed like a castle (perhaps in a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean ...
We've written before about Yunana, the young female fan of postwar Showa-era love hotels who posts photos of her outings (alone) to these bygone dens of romance and sex.
It seems Yunana's following has continued to grow, since she has just released a book showcasing her work.
The book's title, In Search of the Revolving Bed, is a reference to perhaps the most famous love hotel room gimmick that is actually quite a rarity (it became illegal to install new ones after the law changed in 1985).
Now aged 26, the love hotel enthusiast was recently interviewed by Bunshun about her activities, ...
Japanese capsule toys are a cornucopia of choice and variety. There seems to be no end to the objects that pop out from the thousands of vending machines found at stores, train stations, and tourist destinations.
What's still often surprising, though, are the eyebrow-raising subject matters of certain toys.
Last year, for instance, we reported on the miniature vibrator capsule toys.
Slightly less risqué but just as awesome are these love hotel-inspired capsule toys. For a mere ¥300, you can get your own love hotel room key.
We have yet to spot these in the wild -- might we find the ...
Old love hotels in Japan have long enjoyed a special brand of fandom, either for their garish visuals or their increasingly haikyo-style "abandoned" status.
But a new sort of love hotel otaku is emerging. And they are young women who visit the establishments by themselves.
We previously mentioned the 20-year-old student whose YouTube channel was obsessed with introducing love hotels (along with net cafes and other such places). A few weeks ago, she showcased the cheapest love hotel in Tokyo.
An even more prolific profiler of love hotels is Yunana, who shares her fascinating trips to ...
Regular readers will know that, in between all the news and updates about gravure idols and Japanese porn, or trying out new Japanese adult toys, we love to explore aspects of Japanese adult culture like the history of sex and old love hotels.
Showa-era love hotels are truly the best if you want garish colors, kitsch, and cheap gimmicks (revolving beds and so on) instead of the more practical amenities and chic interiors that have become the mainstream today (as nice as those are).
We spotted this selection of fantastic love hotel images on Twitter. Unfortunately, they are not captioned ...
If you have ever used a Japanese love hotel, you might have interacted with staff in the reception area. Usually they are hidden behind a screen and you get a glimpse of a hand and nothing much else.
But what is the staff area like? Where are the employees in the meantime? Perhaps hanging out in the operations/control room, which may well look something like this.
The photo was shared on Twitter user Onitsuchi last week and went viral (as in 8,000 retweets).
We say "control room" because the room evokes a Cold War-era control tower at a tiny airstrip somewhere, or perhaps the bunker of a ...
Have you ever seen (or stayed at) a love hotel like this?
Though the cyberpunk (is that the right descriptor?) style is like something out of a Neo Tokyo landscape or cut from the same cloth as the Robot Restaurant in Kabukicho, it is actually a room in an Okayama hotel with a retro fairground and amusement park theme.
As fans know, the most outrageous and unusual love hotels are to be found not in cities but deep in the countryside.
Saying that, if you are into BDSM and dungeons, there is this love hotel in Asabu, Minato ward, that has been running for four decades.
The ...
We all like to stay in fancy hotels sometimes (if not all the time).
But there's also something fun and kinky about an overnight stay at a love hotel. It's like the kitsch is telling you to really make the most of your time there with a partner (or two).
We recently spotted a write-up about the Ichiraku Ryokan, an inn in Hiroshima that was a former red-light district inn and then a love hotel. It was built in 1950. The old red-light districts were still allowed for a time in the early postwar period until laws were changed to ban prostitution (at least in its overt form).
The current ...
Once again we have been trawling some of Japan's postwar history for insights about the sexual development of the nation. Here are some awesome vintage images of classic love hotels.
Fans of love hotels and this blog will immediately spot that this one is the Meguro Emperor, a pioneering love hotel from the 1970s that has since re-opened.
The other two are, apparently, the Ichinomiya London and Olympia hotels.
It was around this time that love hotels started to become very elaborate, adding castle-style "battlements" and turrets. The results are bizarre, lurid and wacky, ...
Playboy has made a video offering a "rare glimpse" into what they call a "vintage love hotel". Well, Hotel Fukui in the Kyobashi district of Osaka, a business district with a bevy of love hotels behind the station, is actually more like a themed love hotel than a vintage one (initially we were expecting something more like the Hotel Okura).
True "vintage" love hotels, as we know, are fairly basic affairs, with nice amenities but a straightforward decor. The gaudy or wacky themes came more recently in the 1970s.
Popular Japanese consensus says that by the 2020 Summer Games in ...
