Friday, May 12, 2006
A Bed In Tokyo
Our super cheap hotel turned out to be very entertaining with something of a hostel atmosphere. Our fellow guests were quite a mixed bunch, other budget travellers as well as Japanese and foreigners who were in Tokyo on business. Then there was the woman who claimed to be in town to work, but seemed to spend most days in the lobby on the internet. Most fun of all was the apparently crazy (and frequently drunk) Japanese man, who didn’t let his limited English get in the way of his attempts to engage anyone who would listen in conversation. We never learned a great deal about him, but we do know that his home town was in a ‘Ski area’ (as this was one of his best bits of English).Most of the rooms are singles, which we have discovered is quite common in Japan and leads to quite good pricing if you should be travelling here on your own. So we had two adjacent single rooms, which meant we also had two TV’s and two fridges (so we could have had a beer fridge if they had both worked!). It may not look much in the picture, but the rooms were clean and the hotel had everything we needed.
It was here that we first discovered the many joys(?) of some more ‘traditional’ Japanese hotels. In your room you are provided a dressing gown and a pair of slippers, very nice you think. However, what may surprise you is that it seems quite acceptable to just wander around the hotel wearing nothing but these items. So in the hotel lobby, which was basically the common area with TV, computers, vending machines and seating areas there would be several guests (at almost any time of day) just checking their email in their gown and slippers!
Our next fun discovery was the bathing arrangements. There are a few shared bathrooms in the building that have normal showers, but on the top floor is also a traditional communal Japanese bath. Ladies have their own time slot, very generously they are allowed exclusive use between 10pm and midnight, other than that it’s men only!!
You also need to pay attention to the rules. You have to wash first, before getting into the bath. There’s a communal shower area where you sit on a small stool (OK it looks more like a potty than a stool) and wash. Obviously you want to be seen to be very thorough, you wouldn’t want the other bathers to think you were unclean. Then, once you’ve done all that you can finally get into the bath, remembering the number one rule. Under NO circumstances must any trace of soap enter the bath. The bath if for soaking and relaxing, not washing. So then you just sit there, up to your neck in what feels like near boiling water, ‘relaxing’. I know it all sounds a bit odd, and it did take me several days to build myself up for it, but it’s quite fun really once you know the rules... Honestly!
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