Japan Road Trip: Abandoned Love Hotel

Today, I get to share an abandoned love hotel Ben and I stumbled upon. As much as Japan is a first world, advanced and clean society, a certain amount of decay exists everywhere which makes finding abandoned buildings sometimes a little tricky. Since Japanese people as a generalisation are super tidy, over growth and broken structures become the give always! When we spotted broken castle turrets in among over grown vines, we pulled over quick smart :)

This love hotel, called Route 2, became a magical time capsule, everything perfectly preserved inside, almost as if the owners had one day just decided to up and leave - mystery!

The broken turrets and over growth

This love hotel consisted of around 15 standing structures, each with a slightly different thing going on inside - some had fairly simple motel room layouts, whilst others (in the slightly higher price categories) had extra fun features - which Ben and I loved! Stain glass panel anyone?

Karaoke?

Love hotels, exist for couples to get away but also act as places for prostitution to occur and hey, maybe even the weary night traveling who needs some rest - although I was turned away from staying at a love hotel myself because I was single, so definitely frowned upon :P

Everything was in tact, the doona covers and sheets still on all the beds.

One room came with its own poker machine and a very old most wanted poster found in the office!

I tried to take photos of details I loved :)
Pink phone, obvious Fee choice

Arcade game, anyone?

The most expensive room to rent came with two levels and its own indoor swimming pool!

Hand towels still hanging up 

What the structures looked like from the outside - fairly boring

Tea sets in each room

One of the rates outside a room. You can usually tell which hotels are love hotels in Japan because you'll see two prices advertised, rest (usually a few hours) and then stay, similar to a normal hotel.

I loved this room, with its red bridge over to the bed!

And the gold tub - amaze balls!

Pretty star ceiling!

A vintage Nintendo system, which gave us some ideas to when the place had been abandoned from

What a cool place huh!

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Japan Road Trip: Osaka

I'll start my Osaka post by saying, driving through manic Osaka city was a really un-fun experience and no doubt tainted our visit :( We unsuccessfully drove into one of those turntable style parking lots and were turned away because our van was too big. In the end we resorted to street parking (though only an hour) which meant we kind of had to rush through dountobori :( I still have mad love for Osaka, it has a certain seedy charm + lots of themed love hotels which I've always had a soft spot for :) I do think I over hyped Osaka to Ben though, so I promise not to do that in this post :p

Another unfortunately incident was that I left our headlights on. I honestly did around 1% of the driving and both times ended in horrible consequences, this being one them. To give myself credit, Ben had left the headlights on after going through a tunnel and unlike cars that I'm used to our van didn't alarm us when we took out the keys. So after an hour of exploring we came back to a dead battery. A lot of really boring things transpired so I'll just skip to the ending and say our battery was recharged and we were off :) We did have intentions of spending a lot more time in Osaka but by this stage Ben and I had the grumps and we just wanted out of the city - sorry Osaka, we'll do you right next time :)

One thing I did notice in Osaka and then later in Tokyo was girls dressing the same :) A little googling later and apparently it's known as, Futago Koude, cute!

Little Chapel Christmas love hotel!!

Futago Koude!!

Our rescue guy :)

I wrote down in my notes Aioi, Michi No Eki, so I think this photo was taken there :) Beautiful spot, wherever it was anyway! I also wrote "sick of kombini food" and "lady told me my hair was beautiful" :) :)

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