Everything is Love...

Being the dimwitted rock gods that we are, the Delightful Miss E and I completely failed to prepare accomodation in Osaka when we were "planning" our summersonic trip. In the end we decided that the best thing to do was to just turn up in Osaka and assume we could find a room. It's a huge city with many hotels, surely we would have no problem ...

and no problems did we have, primarily because of the Glorious Japanese Invention that is the Love Hotel. Love Hotels are designed for brief stays, usually 2 hours, for the express purpose of having lots of sex. Apparently in Japan it can be quite difficult for young people to have sex in the comfort of their own homes, either because they are living with family or because they are in housing which is not very good for sound. Having heard the sounds that a Japanese woman was making in a Hiroshima Love Hotel just a week ago, I can vouch for the ... ah... unrestrained ... nature of the self-expression which Love Hotels are designed to accomodate. Of course, being a man I don't make noise when I bump uglies, and being an atheist I would never consider bumping uglies before marriage; however, when in Rome it is best to visit the Circus, especially when there is nothing else to do while waiting for the bus home; so the Delightful Miss E and I visited the charmingly named and situated "Hotel Roland" to stay the night.

The little known side point of Love Hotels is that they don't get much business at night. They are designed for the discrete daytime affair, or for that amorous moment when one just has to divert from the days' activities to stick it to someone near and dear. At such a time one only need to pause for the time it takes to fork out the 3000 yen ($35) to get into a room (or in some cases, press the button on the vending machine and head for the lift - everything works on trust in this country, even in the Big City). However, late at night there is another option - 6000 yen to stay from 10pm to 10am, with all the mod cons available in the shorter stays, but more time to avail oneself of them. In Australia such places are $5 an hour, of course, but you would not sleep there and mostly they are the province of street sex workers and junkies; but here in the Land of the Rising Sun they are used by strictly ordinary folk for strictly extraordinary fun. To give an example: while we were checking the prices at Love Hotel Mother Theresa a couple came in to take one of the rooms - she was wearing a yukata and they had obviously been out to some kind of special event for the evening. A beautiful fusion of the sacrilegious, the modern and the ancient in one brief moment.

So what does one get for 6000 yen? A proper double bed (which is a rarity in Japan for some obscure reason), two chairs, a TV with two of the most amateur porn channels you have ever seen, mostly revolving around women being kind of compelled to do something they ultimately enjoy (of course...); a huge gigantic sexpot of a bathtub; a separate bathroom and toilet, much larger than those in the average hotel room; air conditioning (essential in the sauna that is Japan); a Dildo dispenser; and a vague pinkish sort of theme. For a bit extra money at the better love hotels one gets themed rooms, but we didn't have a choice or the money. For your edification, a picture of the dildo dispenser is included in this post, as well as a slightly blurry shot of its deluxe contents (2500 yen, or maybe $28), which like all deluxe packages of this sort are black. I restrained myself from taking pictures of sweet channel porn's offerings, because they really weren't very pleasant.

The things in the room are just the start, however. Discretely tucked away in one corner is a menu of delivery food (cheap) and other things one can engage in if one wants. Playstation 2 rental is free along with a very wide selection of excellent games, but the best part of it is the cosplay. One can obtain free costumes for one's favourite stereotype in order to enhance the lovin' - the main costume types were anime characters, nurses, secretaries, schoolgirls (of course!), the Budweiser girl (!!!), playboy bunny (of course!) and a couple of video game pretties. All one has to do is dial room service and your fantasy will arrive.

But the most fascinating thing? Nowhere in the room was there any advertising for sex workers, call girls, escorts, ladies of the night. You can bring a paid stranger with you through the door, but you can't find an advert for one once you arrive. Most peculiar indeed.

I shan't titillate you with the details of our particular choice of cosplay, porn viewing, dildo selection or playstation game, but we arrived at midnight and had to be up at 6am for our bus, so Sonic the Hedgehog was out, no matter how he was to be played. Nonetheless, a fascinating side point of a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying adventure, and one I can recommend to all my gentle readers, especially if like me you find yourself post-Metallica, all fired up with nowhere to go...