Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts

I spent most of the 1990s in Uppsala, an old university town and power center in Sweden. Uppsala is situated in the middle of a big plain of flat farmland, almost devoid of distinguishing landmarks. Putting some distance between yourself and the town only two features stand out, rising above the low city skyline - the Royal Castle and the Cathedral. Representing worldly and heavenly power, their creators new what they were doing, finding the only hill in the area to build upon. Those two buildings dominate the city, they project their influence over it. They tell us something about what kind of place Uppsala is - or at least what it used to be.

Having spent a lot of time walking around Hirakata, I have come across a building that has the same dominating grip on the surrounding skyline. Easily visible, day or night, it sits atop its hill in resplendent majesty.



At night it is lit up like a beacon. On a sunny day its walls glow bright pink. I am of course talking about the eclectically named Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts.



With its palm tree-lined entrances, lively color scheme and exotic bird theme, not to mention its telling price list and room pictures, the Chapel Coconuts is not just any ordinary hotel. Rather, it's a prime example of something many Westerners find fascinatingly curious - the Japanese love hotel.

Before I came to Japan for the first time in 2006, I read a couple of the standard travel guides and checked a lot of web pages. Love hotels often came up in the "only in Japan!" category of must-sees. But I got the feeling from my readings that love hotels were mostly a thing that belonged in the past, a sort of service establishment that was in decline.



How wrong I was. As far as I can see, they are very much alive. Having spent some time walking around Tokyo, Sapporo and Osaka, I have come across gaudy love hotel districts in all three cities, seemingly doing brisk business. According to a January article on The Japan Times Online web site, love hotels are considered such a good investment that there are even special love hotel funds available to investors. As one such investor is quoted as saying, "It's related to one of the three biggest basic human desires, so it's recession-resistant." The article also mentions that some 37 000 of these places are estimated to exist in Japan.

Short-stay hotels are not something that only exists in Japan of course. I have come across them in other places, like Mexico and the U.S. Those were in pretty seedy areas though, and seemed to my untrained eye to be very much geared towards prostitution. That doesn't seem to be the case to the same degree with the Japanese version.



Granted, there were one or two unaccompanied women standing around in a Kyobashi love hotel area when I walked through there a couple of weeks ago, and I have navigated through a tiny, labyrinthine block of love hotels in Iriya, Tokyo, with neon-colored houses and a middle-aged woman waiting around every corner. But a recent Saturday night visit to Namba yielded none of that, only several young couples walking hand-in-hand through the well-delineated block of hotels, checking out the different menus before disappearing into their establishment of choice.

Personally, I've only concerned myself with the outsides of love hotels so far, enjoying their often outrageous design. If Japanzine's very information-packed article (as re-printed on the Quirky Japan Homepage) on love hotels is to be believed though, the insides of these places are changing, away from the garish and crazy towards the more discretely stylish. Giant mirrors, revolving beds, vibrating chairs and weird theme rooms may soon be a thing of the past in most places.



So perhaps it's time to go before these hotels all get gentrified. For the curious, Japanzine has plenty of recommendations and the Osaka area seems especially fruitful. Beware that some of the specific hotel information appears outdated. A quick search showed that JZ favorites such as Gang Snowman and Belles des Belles have already been re-modeled. You can also check out this love hotel listing, "IN ENGLISH!", that looks to be up-to-date.

In the meantime, Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts does not seem to have given up on offering the fantastic rather than the sophisticated. The website proudly proclaims that it re-opened in March after a period of renovation, still boasting brightly colored rooms and a sort of theme park ground floor with a giant snake's head and a grotto feel. And the exotic birds and dolphins are all still there.



For a Canadian honeymooning couple's report on their stay in a love hotel, see this news article from The Globe and Mail: "There's nothing like standing in a hotel devoted exclusively to sex and staring at a black-lit mural of humpback whales to give you the sensation that you are in a different country."

The latest Japanzine Magazine, with articles in English about what's going on in Japan, can be downloaded for free here.