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Dec 09 2020 13 Comments

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

With individual rooms and connected parking spaces, the love hotel below has a fairly common design for small, relatively out of the way places.

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

Built in the late 60s or early 70s, the rooms were presumably quite modern at the time, but unsurprisingly they now look incredibly dated to say the least. That said, they can’t have looked that much better in the early 90s when the hotel was somehow still operational. Needless to say it’s impossible to know how many customers they actually had back then, but it’s probably safe to assume it wasn’t many — hence the eventual closure of the business in November 1992.

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

The one slightly odd thing is that lone guests and families were welcome, which is clearly unusual for a love hotel. Not that it makes any difference now of course. Little does after almost 30 years of very visible decay. Dilapidation that admittedly did make reaching the rooms quite difficult, but ultimately it was worth the effort. It always is. The chance to see and quietly take in the slow, unrelenting passage of time never fails to feel special. In fact, so much time has now passed that it’s probably fair to assume that the passion once felt in these rooms has long since fizzled out, and yet love, against all the odds, still lives on.

An overgrown and abandoned Japanese love hotel

Categorized: Haikyo

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. carl says

    12/9/2020 at 9:24 am

    Beautiful. I[m amazed that there still seems to be the feeling that someone was living there until the end and then just stepped out and walked away leaving a few possessions behind.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/9/2020 at 4:56 pm

      Thank you. Yeah, get that feeling quite a lot, which only adds to the interest and atmosphere of such places.

      Reply
  2. ellen says

    12/9/2020 at 11:49 am

    That bed………… 😮

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/9/2020 at 4:56 pm

      Yes, definitely in need of a good clean!

      Reply
  3. Coli says

    12/9/2020 at 12:15 pm

    Very different from the other ones you’ve documented. In fact without looking closer at the rates posted front, I would’ve never guessed it was an old hō. Interesting find:)

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/9/2020 at 5:01 pm

      Yeah, it’s quite low-key, and in many ways just ordinary, which in some ways made it more intersting. Know what you mean too. Not obvious at all, although perhaps that was the idea!

      Reply
  4. Stephan says

    12/9/2020 at 3:37 pm

    This is a very cool find, I like it. Those old TVs are really something and the story has a happy ending! 😉

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/9/2020 at 5:03 pm

      Cheers. Yeah, can’t beat old televisions in places like this. Always interesting to see. And, yes, one last happy ending!

      Reply
  5. Richard says

    12/11/2020 at 6:15 am

    Where in Japan is this place?

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/11/2020 at 9:31 am

      It was a couple of hours north of Tokyo. A first trip outside the city for a long time, but could be a similarly long while before I make another one…

      Reply
      • Richard says

        12/13/2020 at 11:47 pm

        One needs to be cautious about travel right now!

        Reply
  6. cdilla says

    12/16/2020 at 1:14 am

    A great find and collection of photographs. I had thought it was over Hakone way but it seems not.
    There is so much to look at, but for now it’s the pillow case design. Looks almost like a board game.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      12/16/2020 at 10:12 am

      Cheers. Certainly wouldn’t be out of place in Hakone, but nah, this was north of Tokyo.

      Good call. I hadn’t noticed that. Let’s hope the guests had more distractions than the pillow case designs!

      Reply

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