In Japan, due to three or more familial generations living together in a home constructed of wood, tatami mats and paper-thin walls, couples go to "Love Motels" when they need some quality time.
To Americans, the idea is at first funny, then creepy, then kind of novel. So Jared and I finally took a peek at Hotel Mint House.
The cheapest rooms here cost $15.00 per hour, and cost $45.00 if you stay from 10pm until noon the next day.
To protect your privacy, there is a tarp that you pull across the parking spot when you park your car. Here we are in room 105. Jared liked the yellow hearts printed on the side of the tarp facing the street!
When you enter into the door in front of the parking spot, you can see the price listing for your particular room. Some rooms have pools and jacuzzis in them and others have Karaoke machines and Pachinko pinball games, and depending on the ammenities, they cost different amounts.
On the right side of the wall, there is a box with a picture of the room we selected lit up. We pressed the green button selecting the room, and then the room darkened on our screen and a big screen of all the rooms at the hotel entrance. That way, people would know our room was occupied.Next we entered into a long, dark corridor. Thankfully, our room's light was lit up and we knew to enter that room.
Of course we had to remove our shoes and replace them with slippers before going upstairs!
Once we were at the top of the stairs, we had to take a left turn to enter into our room.
The bathroom amenities were clean and we even had a bidet!
The tub was oversized (particularly rare in Japan--and you know what I mean if you have ever stayed in a Japanese hotel in Tokyo!) and had jet streams that lit up with different colors. They even provided us with Mint-flavored bubble bath!
There was a "Rub Massage Mat" in the bathroom with cartoon characters that made us laugh out loud.
Here's the room in all its glory. Like the mirrors on the ceiling?!
Japanese "mood" lighting:
They had a T.V./DVD player, Karaoke machine and Nintendo gaming system in the room to keep us busy.
When we wanted to leave, we simply dialed "9" on the phone. A sweet Japanese woman came on the phone and said "One hour." A little box on the wall that looked like an alarm system displayed how much we owed.
Then we used something similar to a bank deposit system to insert our money and pay. We pressed the little red button to suction it back to the front desk.
Within 3 minutes we received our change back through the same tube.
When we exited our parking spot we noticed the sign on the wall said "under preparation."
All in all it was a fun adventure! We recommend you try it at least once while you live in Japan to be able to say you did it and to get away from the kids!
