Failed Fujisan. Homeless in Kyoto

We were heading back to Kyoto with nowhere to stay. This was another job for John! I sent him a text and asked him to try and book us accommodation in Kyoto. Just before we arrived in Kyoto John sent a text back to say he had been unable to find anywhere that wasn't completely booked up. We walked to K's hostel, the huge place we had first stayed in Kyoto, hoping for a cancellation that hadn't yet made it onto their system, but they had nothing. It was only when we arrived there that we realised we had forgotten about the Gion Matsuri! People were coming from all over Japan, and probably all over the world, for this annual festival in Kyoto. If we had known about it before we arrived in Japan we would have arranged our time differently to be there for it, but we had already spent too long in Kyoto and we probably would have had to book before we even got to Japan.

We sat in the cafe next door to the hostel and used their wifi to look at various options online. Sure enough every hostel in Kyoto was fully booked, so I started to look for information on love hotels. These places normally offer rooms by the hour, but, like Manga kissas offer a lower rate for overnight. They are reportedly quite unusual places, tending towards the utterly bizarre at times: themed rooms decorated in styles as varied as the 60s or the Second World War. We had planned to stay in one for fun one night during our stay, anyway, so this seemed the perfect opportunity. I enquired at the very helpful desk of K's Hostel and I was sent a few blocks down the road.

At the love hotel, I first had to attract the woman's attention from behind the desk, then I very much failed to make myself understood. She had very little English, but managed “business hotel, that way!” pointing further down the street. I thought it might be because I was on my own, which I had read they don't like at love hotels, so I tried to indicate that it was for my wife too, but I think she just wanted to know whether my wife spoke Japanese. She had said the business hotel was cheaper anyway, so I went along the road to ask about the rate. It was much more than we had paid before, or could afford, and K's Hostel confirmed it was much more than the love hotel would be for the night. Perhaps it was because they don't want foreigners, it was suggested. We thought that the woman at the love hotel maybe meant it was more expensive because they were still charging at the hourly rate, so we asked for a girl working in the cafe to write down “How much is the night rate?” in Japanese and Joanne and I went along together, thereby eliminating two of the possible problems. This time the woman made it very clear that they just didn't want gaijin. We were furious! How unbelievably racist!

So we went to the business hotel, completely screwing our budget. It wasn't all that great either, but they did have wifi in the lobby, so we stayed up to book accommodation in Tokyo and send off requests to Beijing Couchsurfing, determined to get in early enough that we wouldn't have to go through the same as we had in Japan. By the time we went to bed it was too late to catch the early train in the morning, but we couldn't find anywhere to stay at fujisan anyway; there was some kind of big organised walk up it, which was presumably why everything there was booked up too. We decided to forget it and just go from Tokyo in a day or two, allowing us finally to get a decent night's sleep.

Silly dressing gowns at the business hotel

The one benefit of staying in that hotel, apart from the amusing kimono-style dressing-gowns, was that we did get a decent night's sleep. But the room had cost us nearly 90% of our daily budget, and really wasn't all that nice. When we had to, we checked out and got the train to Tokyo.

written by

The Happy Couple on July 15, 2009 from Kyoto, Japan

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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