screen shot of the eco-oto iPhone app (30 second flush selected)

Now, thanks to the “eco-oto” (“エコ音”, which is short for “ecological sound”) iPhone app, you no longer have to feel embarrassed that someone is hearing you take a whiz in a public toilet. Do I hear you saying “Why on earth would I be embarrassed fulfilling a call of nature?” Well there are a few things that you need to know about Japan.

Japanese women are very self-concious about the noise that they make in the bathroom. Maybe it is because there are so many other women hanging out in front of the mirrors doing other things that it is no longer deemed appropriate to have a whiz (or whatever..) in a public toilet anymore. Whatever reason it may be, many toilets in Japan come equipped with a “sound” button on their control panel (if you don’t know why Japanese toilets have a control panel then you have a little catching up to do but unfortunately that it out of scope of this article!). When you press the “sound button” these toilets will play a recording either of some music, or more likely, they replicate the sound of a flushing toilet. The idea is that this sound will drown out the noise of you “fulfilling your duty” on the commode, and hence quash the embarrassment factor of taking a slash.

close up of a real Japanese toilet with a button for making a fake flushing sound

But, there is a problem. Not all public toilets have these cool futuristic control panels. While some people scope out public toilets in advance to make sure that they always know where a safe and noisy toilet is nearby, how embarrassing would it be if you got stuck in a public toilet without such a button!? Well that is what this iPhone app is all about. At the touch of your screen, your iPhone will replicate the sound of… well, a flushing toilet.

The app, which has been on sale in the Apple iPhone app store since last Thursday 5th Nov (link to iTunes Appstore), is designed to be cute and pink and the buttons are large and easy to press so you can even press them if you have long nails. For people who tend to be louder than average, or perhaps for those days after a great curry you can even increase the volume of your simulated flushing sound (think Niagra falls). Better still, you can choose between “flushing water” for 30, 60, 90 and 120 seconds depending on your mood. I personally have no idea how people would ever know which to choose. More to the point, shouldn’t there be a 5 minutes option?

the button to make a flushing sound is big enough to be pressed using the palm side of your finger in case you have long, fancy nails.

The app costs 115 yen or 99 cents and is semi-bilingual (it comes with hilarious Jinglish translations). You can download the app by using this direct link to the iTunes Appstore. Flushed with pride, the company responsible for this app – polygonmagic.com – also made this press release:
http://www.polygonmagic.com/business/ip-ecooto.html.

It’s quite funny, and apart from some of the features mentioned above, Eco-Oto also has the following selling points:

• Very easy for girls to carry around, with a cute & stylish design (its an app for Christ’s sake, how can it not be easy to carry around if you already have the iPhone!)
• Sound level that you use is automatically saved for next time (where would be be without that?)
• The pink dotted indicators slowly flush in towards the middle, to indicate how much more flush time you have (theoretically, this should be longer than your own “steady stream time”)
• The flush button flashes 10 seconds before the sound finishes (to warn you to put the squeeze on the flow – and here I was thinking that this would be delayed until version 2.0!)
• Easy for beginners (well, there is a first time for everything I guess)

Maybe it’s just me but I see this as being the first of a plentitude of similar apps. Just think of the power of the iPhone functionality. You could have one app which created a map of all of the people flushing toilets throughout Japan. Perhaps people could have another button that you press when you didn’t need to use the app so apple could create a nationwide map pointing out user-friendly toilets from embarrassing ones!

Better yet they could create an SNS which alerts you when your friends and other people are flushing nearby… or perhaps it alerts you when they enter a toilet and haven’t started flushing so that you can assist them remotely!? The possibilities are endless.

Do you think you’d ever use an app like this? Is the saving that embarrassment really worth 99 cents? Who on earth are you embarrassed about being heard by anyway? Better yet, share with us in the comments section your ideas for new toilet apps and maybe we can convince the developers to release a stippy toilet app!?

Tasteful front door of a nurse flavored Fashion Health establishment in Akebonocho

But why the sudden boom now? Besides the substantial slow down in M&A in the rest of the market, it seems that demographics are the real catalyst for this boom. The shop owners in this industry are no exception to the aging of society that is troubling the Japan of the 21st century. As their owners slowly reach 70 years old, even owners of “Fashion Health” look forward to their own happy endings and think about retirement. I have a funny feeling that the shacho (社長, president) of such companies have a few more day to day “issues” to deal with in addition to keeping the accounts balanced and would enjoy the peace after retirement more than most. I really can’t imagine how an elderly man would keep his own against a dispute with his friendly neighborhood Yakuza.

Quite recently the owner of “A”, one of Kabukicho’s most famous fashion health establishments is said to have rode this wave of M&A and sold his business to a more energetic young entrepreneur. According to our sources, the greatest number of similar transactions have been in Shinjuku and Yokohama although due to the nature of the business, it is hard to get hard figures.

The beauty of the concept is simple. Unlike call girl services, the customer doesn’t have to pay for a hotel room. What you save him in hotel dollars, he can spend with you… being more of a frequent flier. Although as the shop operator you have to provide rooms, at an average take of about 8000 yen for 40 minutes, you hardly have to worry about capacity issues. Popular stores are said to turn over there rooms about 5 times a day. Even when you factor in that the shop splits the take 50:50 with the “companion” that still makes for 20,000 yen per room per day. It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to work out that with a tiny 10 room building you are talking 200,000 yen a day or about 70 million yen a year. If you are willing to compromise on quality (and safety standards) then it’s unlikely that a building that size is going to cost you more than 150~200 million yen even in Tokyo/Yokohama. Needless to say this is a gross yield and so you have to subtract a bunch of other costs first but your ROI will still be quite respectable.  For the owners, it’s not a bad deal either – they’re willing to shift into a slower gear and they get a bit of a golden parachute to thank them for the efforts in building the business.

The transaction must be structured carefully. Because the law states that the license for fashion health can only be continued for one generation, this loop hole only exists for owners who were smart enough to own their business and apply for their license through a corporate entity. That way, after any sale, the owner and operator of the business remains the same and it is only the shareholders of the business change (this is a trick that is often used in many countries to avoid real-estate transaction fees and taxes). All the new “owner” then has to do is change the management of his company and he has control of his newly purchased entity. Sounds a helluva lot easier than M&A for normal Japanese companies!

Unfortunately, there is a bit of competition out there. The main buyers so far have been owners of large-scale “health” shops in Susukino and Akebonocho who aren’t afraid of throwing their money where their pants are.  It’s also an attractive option for entrepreneurs in other sub-sectors of the industry, hoping to spread some of their risk.  The most recent transaction that I’ve heard about is for the lease hold of a small shop in Akebonocho (曙町), Yokohama with only 5 rooms that apparently changed hands for 30 million JPY. In that neck of the woods your going to struggle to get 500% occupancy like our previous example (damn that would mean a gross yield on investment of 100%!!!) but you’re still going to get your cash back in a very short time.  Part of me feels sorry for the shacho getting screwed out of the business he built his life on for such a low price, and the other part of me recalls the havoc that unexpected law changes have done to the consumer finance industry recently and I think that perhaps he’s just lucky to get anything for it.

What do you think? Are you interested?  I remember when love hotels were all the rage about 10 years ago.  A bunch of foreign investors came into the market and bought enough love hotels to make a private REIT style investment fund.  Annual yeilds were supposed to be north of 25%.   If anyone ever hears of an opportunity to invest in a Fashion Health REIT, please drop us a line!

Yet another “Only in Japan” story, but we just had to delve deeper into this one! According to many of the foreign press outlets this week, hundreds, possibly thousands of Japanese women have been conned into buying baby lambs, which they thought were in fact poodles. Coming from a background where an annual highlight is Christmas lamb, this story tested my limits. But this is Tokyo, and anything is possible.

This astonishing discovery was made on prime time TV, where actress Maiko Kawakami (川上麻衣子) was proudly showing off pictures of her new pet poodle. When she wondered out loud why her short-cut, cute new puppy would neither bark, nor eat dog food, members of the panel amusingly pointed out that it was perhaps not a puppy, but in fact a common sheep! According to the reports, the police subsequently fielded thousands of calls from distressed women, who suddenly realized that their dogs “bark” only made it to “ba…”

Once my ribcage recovered from the hilarity and bizarreness of this supposed situation, I got on to scouring the Japanese news sites to verify this, because could it really be true? I could not find a single reference in the Japanese news. And no, it was not April 1st, but fool on anyone who throws a poodle in the pot for Christmas.

The only evidence exists at the source. Maiko Kawakami writes a daily diary on her website, the entry is here, which contains one line, nonchalantly saying “I have had emails from people who have also heard of toy poodles which have actually turned out to be lambs. But they have not heard what happened to them since, which is worrying.” A single comment on her blog states that this incident was shown on CNN News, but they stressed that this was only “something that Kawakami had heard about”.

A search for images of “toy poodle” brought up pictures of many breeds of dog, a couple of rabbits, kittens, and even a budgy, but alas, no sheep. Despite this though, the Japanese authorities have reported to the foreign press that they have shut down at least one company, which has imported from Australia and sold over 2,000 lambs as poodles, for over 150,000 yen each. This is about half the cost of a purebred non-sheep poodle in Japan.

Maiko Kawakami, born in Sweden, is now 41. Her first hit drama series in 1979 was called Kizuna, and then the high school drama”3-nen B-kumi- Kinpachi Sensei”, which is still shown on reruns 28 years later. Then, 4 years later, at 17, she was launched further into stardom appearing in a provocative “photographic essay” called “Atsui Kuni, Yume no Kuni, Umareta Kuni” (A hot country, a country of dreams, the country I was born”), shot by the well-known photographer Kishin Shinoyama.

These days, Kawakami is a famous actress, appearing often on TV talk shows, as well as a number of Japanese movies and drama series per year, including the current Usuwashiki-Oni drama series.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite the popularity of Usuwashiki-Oni, we were not so surprised that the Japanese media decided that one of the main stars having the wool pulled over their eyes in such a fashion was not worth mentioning. No doubt Kawakami will be sheepish in returning to prime time TV…

We would love to hear from anyone who actually saw this on TV. Please leave your comments below! By the way, the “Urban Legends” site has classed this story as FALSE, but lets not let that get in the way of a good yarn…!

I have always been a supporter of leaving key services up to the central government to run. Services like the police, prison, schools, universities and up until now I thought the post office of Japan was no exception. In my mind the postal system here in Japan has always provided efficient service, despite being blatantly over-staffed. That was until last week.

I could delve into the standard arguments for privatization. How the post office here has three branches: postage, banking and insurance and how the insurance is over-priced for minimal cover and how the savings accounts of nice little hunched over Japanese ladies earn a meager 0.1% and are used as a private slush fund for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party – but that is old news and fairly standard knowledge here. It is also the price you pay when you have a docile population that prefers to remain ignorant about money and compound interest. Still, I thought the postal service is pretty reliable here and they get the job done. Of course this photo gives some indication of how competent our illustrious Japan Post is. Taken from the Japan Post Annual Report, note the wonderful English at the bottom.

However, I thought I would share a more personal thing that happened at work.

We had a mail-out to do for a client and decided to stuff the envelopes in-house. Now, at work we have a long-standing relationship with the post office and have had a “postage paid” contract with them for over 10 years. So you can’t blame me for thinking this would be a cake-walk. The company has done this many times before, but it was my first time.

After ringing the post office and talking to a very friendly lady, I was assured that the post office could come and pick up our envelopes and post them the following day. I arranged a time and sure enough, 2 post office workers came and picked up the envelopes. Granted, they did say they normally wanted the number of envelopes counted, but it was no problem this time and they would be sent the following day.

The next day I got a phone call from the post office which was quite disturbing. A Mr. Hirokane of Japan Post accused me of not having a “postage paid” contract. He was accusatory and downright rude. I asked to speak with his boss. His boss was “away”.

Once I had my super efficient admin girl hunt down our contract and customer-number, which we had never been asked to provide before, Mr. Hirokane (aka chief gimp) then told me he didn’t really want to send our envelopes anyway, because they weren’t bundled into each postal code. Now, in Japan postal codes run into 7-digits, so that would have been, at worst almost physically impossible, at best taken two extra days to sort through the addresses – not an option.

I asked the chief gimp Japan Post guy if he had a solution. He suggested I send the envelopes at their parcel rate which would have jacked the price up ten times the normal amount the post office had always sent our envelopes for. I asked him again if his boss was back…to no avail. When I told him that we weren’t prepared to pay parcel rates he point-blank refused to send the envelopes. So that’s how we ended up getting our envelopes delivered back to our office by the postal workers, despite the post office having picked them up and promising to send them out, despite the same post office having done the same task umpteen dozen times for us before.

Wondering what to do, I saw our regular courier guy from Sagawa cruise by the office in his always-cheerful manner. Now this guy not only works the most hours of anyone I know second to me, he also loves his job. He is super-efficient, always has a solution and nothing is “too hard.” Rare in Japan.

I approached him, and I was pleasantly surprised when he wasn’t phased by an ever-so-slightly overweight gaijin asked him to solve our envelope send-out issue.

The conversation went like this (slightly abridged from the Japanese):

Me: Yo, courier dude.
Sagawa man: Sup?
Me: The Post Office shafted us and we need to deliver these envelopes.
Sagawa man: No worries mate. And did you know we charge 1 yen less than the post office?
Me: Really! Go for gold and send ‘em off for us, courier dude.
Sagawa man: Sweet as.

Refreshing to say the least. I breathed a big sigh of relief. Our envelopes were sent off without a hitch and I will never use the post office again as much as I can help it.

The shift to Sagawa has started to happen. I keep thinking back to my conviction that the post office was one service that should be kept under the government umbrella–and how wrong that conviction was. I would have been up the proverbial creek with not a paddle in sight if there wasn’t any competition to Japan Post. Long live privatization!

Until June 2002 Magic Mushrooms were legal in Japan

Japan, despite its lax attitude toward tobacco and alcohol, has always been very strict when it comes to matters of “more illicit” drugs. Laws regulating soft drugs such as marijuana are as strict as those toward heroin and cocaine. This was not so until the American Constitution was imposed on Japan after World War II; actually hemp has been an integral part of Japanese culture and religion since ancient times (see www.taima.org for more details), but that is another article altogether.

Generally, restrictions on all drugs in Japan are so strong that it is not uncommon for customs officers to seize over-the-counter foreign cold medicines, and possession of cannabis can lead to weeks in jail. The most famous victim of this law is Beatle Paul McCartney, who spent nine days in jail in 1980 for the possession of 219 grams (7.7 ounces) of marijuana.

Magic Mushroom street vendor in Shibuya, Tokyo

In a country this strict, it may surprise some people to know that magic mushrooms were legal in Japan until June 6, 2002. A loophole in the Japanese law banned psilocybin in extracted or pure chemical form but not the actual mushrooms themselves. Thus, magic mushrooms, sealed in plastic wrap, could be purchased alongside weed pipes and Bob Marley posters in head shops throughout Japan. I’m not sure about the specifics of the law, but the packages I saw said “観賞用” (Basically look but don’t eat) on them. Of course, everyone was eating them, from college students to gaijin to bored housewives. It must have been the housewives, or perhaps the threat of hooligans at the 2002 World Cup that prodded the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor & Welfare to close up the loophole.

Luckily, we had some advance warning. There was a bit of lag time between the decision to outlaw magic mushrooms and the date that the law came into effect. All of the head shops had signs up reminding their customers that they had until June 6, 2002 to stock up on as many mushrooms as possible. This is the story of my experience during this period of lawlessness.

Working as JET’s in rural Japan, my friend and I knew that a weekend trip to Kobe/Osaka would be necessary to score some mushrooms. We had both tried them before in our respective home countries, and thought we knew what we were getting into. The shops were not hard to find – there were several under the tracks of Kobe’s Sannomiya Station. We bought what they had in stock and proceeded to Osaka to test out our newfound purchases at an underground Shinsaibashi club.

It was hard to believe that we had just legally bought mushrooms and were about to eat them in public. But there they were, legally purchased magic mushrooms, smelling like dirty socks, sitting in our hands.

This is what ‘Shrooms look like when you buy them

It was time to eat. Since the mushrooms were “観賞用” they didn’t exactly have the serving size and nutritional value printed on the packaging. They looked to be about 1/8 of an ounce, the average size of one “hit” back in the states. Only later would we figure out that 1/8 of this species of Dutch ‘shrooms (‘shrooms – as they are called – are usually a less potent Mexican species in the U.S.) was enough to make 6 grown men see Jesus.

So at first, we were having a pretty good time – there is a certain confidence that ‘shrooms impart and it seemed like everybody loved us – we had the whole place under control. Control… I gradually began to lose control of my body slowly but surely. I was fully conscious but was stuck in an “observer” state. I needed to lay down. The last thing I saw before I turned comatose was my friend standing on the bar kicking over other peoples’ drinks. Then I got a good ten minutes of ceiling watching in before two monsters with Down Syndrome began trying to tear me limb from limb (actually they were a couple of Australian guys who had called me an ambulance and were lugging me up the stairs and out of the club – thanks guys if you ever read this).

The mushrooms ran their course through my body and I experienced something that can only be described as flickering in and out of existence (yes these were strong drugs!). Being placed in the ambulance triggered a fear reaction and brought me back down to Earth. The nice young paramedic patiently tried to get my to write down my name and address, but I was determined to write on the air instead of on the paper. He seemed to know what mushrooms were, and had seen cases like me before. “Are magic mushrooms bad for you?” I asked him. Wheeling me out of the ambulance and into the E.R., he replied, “Well, they’re not good for you.”

The doctors and nurses in the E.R. were a bit more clueless. I had already fessed up to my semi-illegal deed, so I figured it was too late to change my story, but I felt a little silly explaining what magic mushrooms were to the emergency room doctor. He had never heard of them before and had to look them up on the internet. The internet?? How do you become a doctor in Japan anyway? The nurse seemed not to want to release me, but I lied to her and said that my hallucinations had stopped, and she let me go after I signed the appropriate forms. Luckily my employer never found out about the whole debacle, and thanks to Japan’s health insurance system, the ambulance ride only cost me about 1,000 yen!

So, you ask, whatever happened to my friend dancing on the bar? He got tackled and was nearly choked to death by club security. He had also apparently jumped onto a ceiling lamp and pulled it out of the socket. He ripped some girl’s designer clothes too, so club security tried to threaten him into paying 100,000 yen for damages, saying that the bar was yakuza owned and they’d be there any minute. Somehow he managed to hand someone a 10,000 yen bill and slip away. Needless to say, the next day neither of us were in the mood for any more magic mushrooms. Which was probably for the best since the extras we bought had somehow disappeared at some point that night anyway.

This story is here to entertain, but I hope it does make some people think seriously about the drug policies of Japan and other countries. Although I got off scott-free in early 2002, the same stunt today could earn you up to 7 years in prison! What a difference a silly little law makes. A good Japanese friend of mine swore he would never try “Drugs” like marijuana, but in return he offered me a cigarette dipped in paint thinner. Almost all societies have a long way to go in creating rational drug policies. In the meantime, let’s all just be sure to stay out of trouble.

On that note, if you do have any stories where you pushed the limit with drugs in Japan, let us know with a comment below!

Earlier this week Nepia, one of the nations largest manufacturer and distributor of domestic paper products released a very limited number of what may be the most expensive tissue paper in the world. Nepia very shrewdly made their new product available only through their internet shop at mid night on Friday, by the time the Saturday morning talk shows had picked up on the campaign it was all but over and all 3000 sets had sold out.

Japan has long been know as a place where tissue paper comes cheap, so cheap in fact that there exists an entire industry of handing out of free tissue paper (ティッシュ配り) for advertising. Young men and women, typically with spiked coloured hair and adorned with various body piercings, tissue distributors can be found around any big city in Japan usually around the entrances to train stations.

Given a good location, one of these skilled workers can hand out some 2 to 3 hundred packs of tissue paper an hour, even more impressively this unlikely looking bunch dole out approximately 2.5 billion packets a year or about 20 packs per person in Japan. Despite this seemingly flooded market, Nepia has introduced a line of tissue paper that sells at 3,000 yen for a set of 2 boxes (about 10 yen/tissue). As a comparison my local supermarket sells a set of 5 boxes for 298 yen (about 0.2 yen/tissue).

The new brand is called the ‘Super Celebrity Nose’ (超鼻セレブ), it features a 3 ply tissue with double moisture retention and is perfumed by Verbena, a flower native to the Americas.

Nepia’s official stance is that they will not be selling any more of the ‘Super Celebrity Nose’ line, but judging from the effort that has gone into PR so far as well as its popularity its fair to say that this was ploy to further gain the public’s interest and we’ll see more in stock soon. On a side note, the company’s current campaign “Hana nice day!” advertising for its less exclusive ‘Celebrity Nose’ line of tissues is quiet amusing and well worth a look just to see just how strange Japanese TV can get (CM1, CM2 & my favourite CM3).

Japan is supposed to be the land of conformity, a land where nobody has original ideas, where everyone unquestioningly follows the pack. But every now and then, people in Japan come up with some things so bewildering that you wonder where the idea could possibly have come from!

The Hello Kitty “Snow Kitty” is one of these. The ultimate present for kids who have never had a chance to play with snow, I was told by the Sanrio employee who invented this. For 4,800 yen, payable online or by bank transfer, the reliable blokes at the Sagawa Kyubin delivery service will deliver right to your door a frozen Kitty-chan snowman made of snow hand-packed in Hokkaido the very day before!

The picture above shows the plastic mold on the right into which the snow is packed, and the left is an actual Snow Kitty which came out of the package. The Kitty arrives in a refrigerated delivery pack, with the snow packed inside the mold. The kids can then have great fun taken out the frozen Kitty, and sticking the 2 eyes, 1 nose, and six whiskers, which are included in the package, onto Kitty’s face.

I imagine that soon after that, Kitty either proceeds to melt slowly into the carpet, or begins the next chilly phase of her life in the family freezer, next to a leg of Hokkaido lamb.

A scene from Otaru, where the snow is packed into the kitty shaped moulds (So many potential Kitty Chans!)
With its many historical buildings, Otaru, one of Japan’s leading tourist destinations, now has another notch on it’s belt as the chilly birthplace for the latest incarnation of the ubiquitous Cat (who, turning 30 this year maybe should not be called Kitty any more).

Hello Kitty was born at Tokyo based Sanrio in 1976. The very first Kitty product was a small clear vinyl coin purse (pictured here) which sold for 240 yen at the time. Kitty is now a phenomenon, adorning over 22,000 products and accounting for over half of Sanrio’s $1 billion yearly revenue (although the person I spoke to suggested it was more likely up to 75-80%). The immense popularity and importance of Kitty in Japanese culture, in both children and adults is highlighted by the fact that this is her 2nd article on Stippy out of over 100, the other of which discussed her relationship with Paris Hilton.

This wealth of licensing revenue has allowed for quite a free reign for Kitty product inventors inside the company to try anything they think might work, such as Snow Kitties. This is exacerbated by the floors, walls, and roof of the Kitty product design rooms at the Tokyo headquarters of Sanrio, all being painted bright pink (but that’s a story for another day).

A monster Snow Kitty at an Otaru snow festival
The official page for the Sanrio Snow Kitty is here, but please beware that it is noted in the instructions that due to the nature of this product, a money-back guarantee is not included, this product cannot be returned, and also cannot be delivered to far away islands (Okinawa etc, although the Hopporyodos are okay I suppose!). Kids, please do not eat Kitty-chans eyes, nose or whiskers. And please beware of yellow snow. (Okay, I made that last piece up…)

This is the part two of Stippy.com’s Love Hotel in Japan series, showcasing the best, weirdest, and more interesting love hotels in Japan. Part one was the introduction to the series, and from today onwards, we will be introducing a different love hotel, and delving deep inside with our cameras and camcorders to show you the darker underbelly of Japanese culture.

First up, is the famous Casa Di Due in Shibuya, Tokyo. (See the video of the Casa Di Due near the bottom of the article. It really captures the disco like atmosphere – from the flashy lights on the outside, the crazy waiting room and lit-up hallways, right into the actual room, and the bed of joy!)

The love hotel is an icon of Japanese culture, the thought of which warms the hearts (and loins), of both Japanese and foreigners alike.

The Casa Di Due is without a doubt one of the most colourful love hotels in Shibuya’s Dogenzaka area. For those in the know, Dogenzaka is the road that curves up the hill from Shibuya’s Hachiko meeting area. The streets get seedier and darker with every block walked, and right up the top, where you think the shops are just ending opens a whole new world – the Shibuya Love Hotel Town.

Unlike many other establishments, the Casa Di Due front is bright and inviting, with large menus and price boards out on the road. It definitely stands out from the pack. And as we were to find out, it had an amazing range of things to do, even if the rooms were small, and the building much less stable that it looked!

Upon entering the building, there is a large, pink waiting lounge, with a number of mannequins wearing various costumes. It was a Saturday night, and to stay for the night, you have to check in from either 10pm or 12am. The Casa is one of the few that let you in from 10pm. Most hotels in Shibuya were surprisingly full at this time, but perhaps due to its slightly obscure location off the main drag, there were a couple of rooms open. The decor of the entrance, the signs suggesting free costume rental, free PlayStation 3 rental (wow!), and a full room service-type menu were very intriguing!

After about 5 seconds of deliberation, we pressed the button on the lit up selection board of rooms, reserving the one that was to become our love pad for the night, paid cash at the waist-high window, received a key, and headed upstairs (carefully avoiding eye-contact with other couples who were on their way out, after enjoying their “rest” together during the day). The elevator had flashy lights, and was covered in posters explaining the benefits of becoming a member of the Casa (more free toy rentals, no membership fee, etc). Arriving at the 3rd floor, the hallway was very trippy – pitch black except for vertical lines of small bright lights (shown in the video clip below). This place was becoming an experience already!

The room itself was much smaller than it looked on the front board. The most striking feature was the massive plasma tv! At at least 42 inches, two of them probably wouldn’t have fit sideways in the room. The room itself was very clean and tidy, although like all Japanese hotels (and many companies), the air conditioner was on winter settings so it was about 28 degrees and stinking hot! As a hot-blooded gaijin, the first thing I had to do was turn that right down!

This hotel obviously prides itself on its service, fun things to do, and variety. Having a plasma tv half the size of the room, and a free PlayStation 3 rental service, I was straight on the phone to the front desk. I dialed 9, the receptionist picked up (from inside her waist high window), and put me through to the rental service. I asked for a PlayStation, and she said “which number?”. Apparently each game (and other toy) has a number so could I please find that and call back. Sitting next to the bed were 2 massive folders of instructions, game machines and game lists (PlayStation 2 and 3, Nintendo WII, Game Cube etc), DVD list (Hollywood movies, lots of anime movies, classic music, and also a number of Japanese adult DVDs), menus of costumes for rent, and a comprehensive food menu. Such a wide selection of things to do!

So I excitedly rang back to get a PlayStation, recalling that I had gawked longly at one at the Bic Camera at the bottom of Dogenzaka on the way up, but was shocked and dismayed to hear that all the PlayStations had been rented! There wouldn’t be any back until the morning. I was definitely not impressed, and felt ripped off as that was one of the major attractions. I began to wonder if maybe they only had one, and used that to lure people in, with first in at 10.01pm, first served. At about that time, the building started to creak and shake from above, and I surmised that the couple directly above were not the ones with the PlayStation. The building itself was surprisingly NOT sound proof, and NOT so stable. The beds were also quite old, very creaky, and not entirely comfortable.

“The Cosplayer”: Each uniform has a numbers attached to them. A quick call to the front desk, and they will deliver your attire of choice to your door (click on the images to enlarge, you sukebe!).

Another issue was room service delivery. Every time you order anything, say hypothetically a high-school girl uniform, and someone delivers it to your room, opening the door and facing that person definitely takes away any anonymity you may have had. (Although reception has a number of security cameras, so there is really none from the beginning.) But not entirely ideal for easily embarrassed people.

The Casa Di Due really outdid themselves on the food selection! This above picture is only one page of about 10. Food ranged from Japanese to Western, as well as Chinese and South East Asian dishes. It also included a full range of drinks, with pints of beer reasonable priced at 530 yen. I assume that the microwave on the bedside table was for reheating some of this food?!

Next to the bed, and below the TV was both a fridge with a mini-bar, and also a vending machine selling various adult toys. This was fairly annoying as it emitted a dodgy pink glow, which didn’t turn off all night.

Anyway, its time for the video, this is just slapped together quickly while we were in the hotel (we had more important things to do than videoing!) but, hopefully this should give a good picture of what the inside of the “Casa” was like.

Watch the stippy.com video rendition of the video in Quicktime (for best quality) by just clicking the image below, or there is a (poor quality) version here.

Enjoy “Casa di Due”:

QuickTime is required for this video, in order to view in full H.264 Quality.

All in all, it was a fun experience, and there was lots to do, although the PlayStation incident was somewhat grating. The cost was around 14,000 yen, which is not bad for a Saturday night, right in the middle of Shibuya. They lost points on size, the actual building itself, and the bed. But they gained points from pure effort in trying to make the place interesting and fun, and for the wide variety of toys and food. A generous 6.5/10.

Casa Di Due:

• Address: 2-14-7 Dogenzaka, Shibuya
• Price: 7,000-15,000 yen for a night, 3,000-5,250 for a rest
• Japanese website here
• Map: Click number 60 on Lovehomap.com (What a great map!)

The love hotel is an icon of Japanese culture, the thought of which warms the hearts (and loins), of both Japanese and foreigners alike. Stippy.com plans to showcase the most wacky and interesting love hotels in Japan, complete with video footage of the interior of each one, including Alcatraz – The Rock in Gunma Prefecture, the conspicuous Hotel Sexus in Kyoto, and of course the historical Meguro Emperor. Look out for these original videos and critiques throughout this year!

The rationale and logic behind the creation of love hotels is simple – Japanese houses have traditionally been very small, with thin walls, and, even still in some cases today, all members of the family sleep in the same room lined up in futons along the floor. Often, the grandparents will also live in the same house. Thus, there is no place for husband and wife to go, making a love hotel an attractive place, not only just to spend a raunchy time with your spouse, but also to get some time away from the family for a couple of quiet hours!

The demand for hotels increases exponentially when you include singles who still live with their parents, common especially for those born in Tokyo where is doesn’t make sense to pay to rent your own apartment as well as those people in Sexless Marriages, a topic which has been discussed at length at Stippy.com. It appears that in many cases the marriage can be sexless, but not so for the husband and wife individually. These people form part of the regular clientèle for hotels, and it is no surprise that love hotels are now scattered all throughout Japan, and are a booming business.

The Rock hotel in Gunma – pictured on the right – a major tourist puller!

The idea that hotels are a great business opportunity has not been lost by a company founded by foreigners in Tokyo who have formed a Leisure Hotel fund, and are buying up hotels around the Tokyo region. They have had great success in entering an industry that has been notoriously difficult for reputable companies to enter.

Anyway, back to the good stuff, the way it works is simple:

• You pay for either a “rest”, usually 2 or 3 hours, or for the evening, usually until 10am the next morning. The costs are around 3,000 yen for a rest, and 10,000 yen for the entire evening, although it gets much more expensive for more popular and wacky the hotel gets. The larger size of the room, the more expensive also.
• Most hotels do not take bookings. For an overnight stay, you usually need to arrive between 8-10pm on weeknights, and 10-12am on Fridays and Saturdays. In some hotels, leaving the room forfeits your access and you cant get back in. However once you are in, you definitely will not be bothered!
• In the lobby of the hotel is a big board with pictures of each room, with differing price depending on the size and “amenities” etc. When you arrive at the hotel, you can select the type of room which takes your fancy and fits your budget by looking at the pictures on the board.
• Check-in is done (almost) anonymously by pressing lit up button on the board which corresponds to the room you want. If the button and back lighting behind the picture on the board is not lit, it means that room is taken.
• Once the button is pressed, a gender-neutral old lady will come to the reception with a key. The reception is basically a hole in the wall, at about waist height to ensure secrecy. You pass the money through, and receive the key. In some hotels payment can be made by a automatic machine in each room, or by using an “air-chute” which connects to the reception.

The irony of the price of a night in a hotel is that it is often cheaper than a regular hotel, and regular hotels don’t usually come with plasma TVs, full-sized beer vending machines, spa baths, rotating beds, PlayStations, and karaoke! Love hotels also can come equipped with any of: water bed, SM chair, wardrobes of costumes, disco balls hanging from the roof, pachinko machines, massage chairs, spa baths, and even sometimes a sauna! Now thats what I can leisure…

Weird Hotels: You can choose to be locked in this thing.. whatever it is!

Love hotels tend to be clustered in the big cities, and a local pastime is “love hotel shopping”, where couples can be seen walking in and out of the lobbies of adjacent hotels looking to see what types of rooms there are. From a foreign perspective an area of clustered love hotels would seem to be a seedy environment inhabited by pimpy old men with unsavoury women in tow, however this is not the case. On a Friday or Saturday night in these areas, many a young happy couple can be spotted hand in hand darting in and out of hotels with enjoyable and fun expressions on their faces. They are just normal people who have nowhere else to go, and the area can have quite a romantic atmosphere.

The interior of many hotels has an element of fantasy, to help people escape from the Taihen Cloud which hovers over their regular lives. The elaborate decor can range from semi-normal, to simulated subway or religious bondage, with also sorts of kink in between.

A Kitty-chan theme (pictured on left). One for Paris Hilton perhaps?

There are a number of interesting books already out in English such as Pink Samurai, which covers the history of love hotels and this aspect of Japanese culture in details, as well as Love Hotels, in which American photographer Misty Keasler portrays some of the newest, most creative love hotels in Japan, or aggregated introduction websites such as the Love-Guide (Japanese).

We will also be posting interesting videos and our thoughts on the newest, coolest, and weirdest love hotels in Japan over the coming year, so don’t forget to check back with us when you have a free few minutes every now and then.

We would also love to hear some suggestions from people of hotels that we must include, as well as peoples interesting love hotel stories! We are prepared to go and do a video shoot of certain hotels that you loved, if you recommend them enough!

Images courtesy Misty Keasler and “Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery”

Earlier in Summer you may have missed the a new chewing gum phenomenon, “Otoko Kaoru” (Literally: ‘Man Scent’).

What’s unusual about this gum is that it causes a rose fragrance to be emitted from the chewer’s body for about one to two hours after its chewed. The Rose Menthol flavoured gum, contained a fragrant component geraniol, which is found in roses. According to Kanebo’s food research laboratory, the component is easily emitted from the body’s sweat glands, in much the same way as garlic or alcohol is.

With its black, ‘this will make you sexy’ design, the gum is marketed at Japanese men. Its been hugely popular, showing that guys here are very concerned about the way they smell. In Japan, it is often reported that young women cannot stand the smell of men, and are particularly put off by the scent of older guys. Apparently this product is an attempt to cash in on the insecurity that such reports have generated.

The gum has proved so successful, that the manufacturer, Kanebo, published a statement to say that they were unable to keep up with demand and the gum had been pulled from the shelves until further notice. A strange way to do business you might say until you take into account that chewing gum sales in Japan are driven through convenience stores. Due to their just-in-time distribution systems, these large chains can’t take on products with a questionable supply.

Is it likely we’ll see more pheromone inducing substances hitting the market soon? Tell us what you think.