When Conan was asked “What is best in life?” he answered “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” – I’m pretty sure if the Mongol general would have asked him “What is worst in life?” Conan would have answered “To marry a Japanese woman, see her taking your paycheck, and to hear the lamentation about setting the AC to a ‘freezing’ 28° C in the middle of summer.”
Please forgive this provocative generalization of an introduction, but whenever I stumble across an abandoned love hotel I can’t help but be reminded of how different Japan is in so many ways to my home country Germany. Especially in the relationship department. What I wrote so far and will write in the lines to come is not an analysis of the Japanese society or even just its love life – I’m just describing what I see and hear as an expat living in Japan, which is quite different from the things one sees and hears as a tourist visiting Japan. After six years in Japan I tend to compare this country to a big amusement park – it’s shiny, it’s tidy, it’s expensive and everybody seems to be nice. But visiting an amusement park and working in an amusement park are two completely different things…
Last time I visited an abandoned love Hotel (*Love Hotel Gion*) I wrote about the love hotel industry in Japan in general – this time I will rant a little bit about relationships in Japan. Back home in Germany, when you talk about your girlfriend or wife, you are usually in the range of being honest to being more positive than it actually is; unless you have a beer with your best buddy, then it might turn into a bitchfest. Not so in Japan! The vast majority of people married to a Japanese woman, no matter if they are foreigners or Japanese, bitch openly about their significant others to everybody – constantly! For every happily married couple I can name two or three where the guy calls his wife “The Dictator” or at least doesn’t feel that it is a waste of time to feed his new-born kid after being pressured into having children… It’s depressing sometimes. (Maybe I should add that I never did any of the above and find Japanese women rather sweet and caring… but I was never married to one.)
While pretty much every woman’s biological clock starts to tick at a certain age that certain age is definitely lower in Japan. The big 3-0 seems to be the current number where cute, open-minded girls turn into little monsters obsessed with marriage – if you meet a woman past 35 you better look for rings right away and get prepared to father a child or two. But that actually is progress in comparison to a derogatory term popular for decades in Japan: Leftover Christmas Cake. Leftover Christmas Cake was a not so flattering way to call an unmarried Japanese woman over the age 25. In Japan Christmas is kind of an additional Valentine’s Day you spend with your significant other eating a beautiful, but extremely overpriced cake – and Leftover Christmas Cake is something nobody wants… Since the ticking deadline is now 30 instead of 25 the term isn’t as popular anymore and you can always see the surprise or even shock on a Japanese person’s face when you mention it.
But even if you get married before the age of 30 it seems like people just follow set behaviors, no matter if they make sense or not; like hardly anybody goes swimming in the ocean after September 1st because according to Japanese definition it’s autumn now – it doesn’t matter that it’s still 32° C outside, you don’t go swimming in autumn since it’s a summer thing to do. And it’s the same with married Japanese women. They quit their jobs, they dress differently, they behave differently. Again: Not all of them, but a lot. A couple of years ago a Japanese friend of mine, a cute girl in her mid 20s, wrote me something along these lines: “I know it’s a horrible thing to say, but I don’t want to work anymore. Maybe I should get married…” – I’m not making this up! In Japan the women have control over the money. No matter how much the husband makes or how high he is on the career ladder: The woman gets the paycheck and the husband gets some pocket money. And if he needs more he has to ask his wife – if he’s lucky enough to have access to a bank account he better remembers when and why he used the ATM, because it’s highly likely that he will have the justify the use of that card. One of the reasons guys married to Japanese women tend to bitch about their wives…
Wives that they sometimes barely know. While arranged marriages are not common in Japan it is not exactly unusual that parents introduce their daughters to suitable candidates – especially when their daughters have passed the devilish age of 30. Traditionally men and women are not platonic friends with each other – and if a couple isn’t working at the same company it’s not really rare that they see each other only once or twice a week, because they are both super busy at work; especially the guys. And that’s another big difference to what I’m used to – unless you are having a long distance relationship you see (and get to know) your significant other on 5, 6, 7 days a week where I come from; way more often than in Japan. With the result that a lot of men (including foreigners) are marrying Japanese women they don’t know nearly as much about as if they would have been in a relationship with a woman in a western country for the same amount of time. On the other hand that fact makes it easier to stay at work till 9, 10 or 11 p.m. every night… Who wants to go home to a wife and kids they barely know…?
For a lot of Japanese men it almost seems to be a hassle to have a relationship after all – the so-called Herbivore Men (草食(系)男子, sōshoku(-kei) danshi) are described as having an “indifferent attitude towards desire of flesh”. Whenever you think you’ve heard it all…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are many, many, many happy (happy!) marriages in Japan, but when I listen to co-workers and friends hardly anybody seems to be really happy in their marriage – and a lot of them cheat on their wives.
And that finally brings us to the exploration of the Furuichi Love Hotel in Hyogo prefecture – an original find I’ve never seen anywhere else before, including Japanese haikyo blogs! Like the *Love Hotel Gion* the Furuichi Love Hotel was more like a motel. You drove into a garage (this one even had closable doors!) and entered a small apartment from there – on the right side was a Japanese style toilet, on the left side a bathroom, straight ahead the fun room with the king size bed and all the other extras. Like the Love Hotel Gion the Furuichi Love Hotel was in pretty bad shape. Most garages were locked and the dozen rooms were accessible via a two small hallways in abysmal state – some vandals used a pickaxe for some remodeling. They did surprisingly little damage to most of the rooms, so I was able to take photos in three of them. Sadly the light from the hallway wasn’t enough to see anything there, so I had to use my flashlight again to bring some light to those abandoned love caves.
The rest of the area was in a state of destruction, too. Right at the entrance was a small house for the manager of the hotel, the interior covered by some smelly pink powder – most likely somebody emptied a fire extinguisher there. The backyard was turned into a junkyard, but if you are looking for a Japanese style toilet you might find an undamaged one there. Glass shards and pieces of porcelain were all over the place, but what really caught my eyes was a sex toy with a cable remote hanging in one of the trees – Merry XXX-Mas everybody!
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Abandoned Kansai 
Thank you for the insight into Japanese culture! It’s surprising to see untouched rooms along debris in the hotel!
Always a pleasure!
Maybe I was lucky and the vandals just started their work and finished it by now? Some places change drastically within months or even weeks.
That dildo hanging in the trees there is pretty interesting.
As is your amusement park metaphor. Can’t say I totally disagree. Although I haven’t really heard people bash their partners openly here. I don’t hear people talk much about their partners at all though…….. Maybe it’s the cultural thing about putting down people in your ‘in-group’ so not to seem egotistical or show-offy to others?
Yeah, it seems like I am surrounded by a “special” group of people. And since some of them read the blog (most of them without me knowing) I won’t leave a detailed comment… 😉
wow, how interesting, thanks for this post! Most marriages don’t sound very fun though.
I am sure there are plenty of happy marriages in Japan, it’s just that the people in my environment don’t seem to be that happy with their choices… At least that gave me some nice stories to tell. 🙂
Very interesting insight. I lived in Guam for a year and a lot of “Single Japanese Women” tour groups would come to Guam on vacation ~ it lead me to believe women were choosing to put off marriage because they were more independent (financially). Maybe it was a last hurrah trip before they settled into wedded unbliss.
Japanese people in general are group people – for a lot of them the group is still more important than the individual. This attitude changes slowly, but tourism is a prime example, whether in Japan or in a foreign country. A lot of young people are financially independent as they live as “parasite singles” (i.e. living with and off their parents till they get married at around age 30), so those groups you have seen were probably either friends with good jobs and nice parents – or grass widows looking for a good time…
Interesting reflection on relationship culture… I think those ‘herbivore men’ got it right, dodging all that horrendous societal pressure. I guess I should consider myself an… altbackenes Plätzchen…? Gibt nix Besseres als Vanillekipferl Ende Januar, ha ha 🙂
Surprisingly I wasn’t surprised when I first heard about the herbivore men. Especially guys are almost impossible to read in this country. Unless they got drunk on half a beer – then they tell you their whole life story…
Ich hatte schon so lange keine Vanillekipferl mehr, ich weiß nicht einmal mehr, wann die am besten schmecken. Aber die Gesichtsentgleisung, wenn man Japanern zu verstehen gibt, dass man über den liegengebliebenen Weihnachtskuchen Bescheid weiß… Der Anblick ist immer noch göttlich!
Gesichtsentgleisung, ha ha. Den Ausdruck hab ich noch nie zuvor gehört 😉
After six years in Japan, I’m sure you’ve got a good grasp of cultural references. I’ve heard about the drinking culture… with all that time spent in the office and knocking back booze, I’m not surprised there’s no time left to spend with their poor wives.
Auf Deutsch hab ich eben noch wesentlich mehr kreative Wortschöpfungen drauf… 🙂
At my company most people atually work longer and drink less, but marriage in Japan is still strange to me in many ways. I once visited the Christmas party of a female colleague… The way she interacted with her husband was so shy and formal it still puzzles me that the couple has two children now, six years later!
The ‘public face’ must be very different from the ‘private one’. Hmmm. I like these kinds of observations 🙂
Thanks for sharing your experiences in Japan. We seldom get a chance to really come to understand a culture with brief visits and sightseeing. It takes real time to do that, and since I’m unlikely to ever spend any time in the east, I appreciate the chance to experience it vicariously. Very interesting post and blog. 🙂
Thanks, I’m happy to hear that you enjoyed my remarks that had little to do with the location I was visiting – but it was a great opportunity to stray off a bit and write about something else than moldy rooms, jumping fences and hiding from security… 🙂
And after six years in Japan and at my age (mid-30s) relationships is a topic very close to my heart.
It sounds like you lead a very interesting life!
Most of the time I actually think that I lead one of the most boring lives ever – but then I write this blog and talk to friends and it doesn’t seem that dull anymore… Just don’t be fooled by sensationalistic articles about Japan. 99% of the time life is not much different from western countries. With my current attitude my life in Germany would not be much different from now. Sushi would be more expensive and good bread would be available… oh – and trains would be late. But that’s mostly it… 😉
Haha. I think we all suffer from the grass is greener thing. Everyone else’s life seems more exotic and interesting, but the reality is most of us get caught up in the day to day of life, wherever we live. And excitement can be a highly overrated thing. We don’t often stop to think that many exciting things are really awful and exciting in a bad way, so maybe we should learn to appreciate boredom. Having had some very bad exciting in my own life, I seldom complain about leading a boring life. Though occasionally I wish I had more freedom to travel. Thus the appeal of you writing about traipsing through, to me anyway, exotic locales. 🙂
“Traipsing through” is actually a very suitable way of describing what I am doing. Whenever I enter an abandoned building I am not feeling like Solid Snake or Sam Fisher or some gas mask wearing hipster… I feel like a little kid with huge eyes who can’t believe what he is doing. I have a tremendous respect for each and every location I have visited as they are the stars of this blog. They are what it is all about. And sometimes, when I am looking through the photos I took, I still can’t believe that it was me who was there and actually took them…
It must be a very eerie feeling to go into all these abandoned places, ghost towns in a way. I would think it would be fascinating.
It is absolutely fascinating – I’m doing it for more than three years now and it barely ever gets boring. Some places are so surreal… like the *Nakagusuku Hotel* in Okinawa…
I checked those two posts out. I love the story about it being haunted! That coupled with the strangeness of the design makes it seem like a mystery waiting to be solved. I’ve many times in old building thought how interesting it would be if the place could tell us what has happened within it’s walls. You must get that same sense when visiting these abandoned places. I look forward to reading more. 🙂
Reblogged this on David Emeron: Reflections upon Reflections and commented:
How very strange and interesting. A colleague of mine is planning to visit Japan for an extended visit. I have heard other very interesting stories regarding how strange a place it is. You write very well in English, for a German in Japan. I see quite a few more American idioms in your writing than British, which is what I used to expect to see–many decades ago–from Germans with a good command of English.
Overall Japan is surprisingly little freaky. It’s much more of a western country than neighbours like China or Taiwan – or the whole South East Asian area. But some things are just different…
I actually learned British English at school, but about half of my colleagues here in Japan are Americans and I watch way more American TV shows and movies than a sane person should. My spelling is a weird inconsistent mix by now (sorry for that!), but yeah, my way of speaking and writing has been Americanized for sure.
These are amazing! And I love the explanations of the origination of Hotel.
Thanks – love hotels are such a Japanese thing, nevertheless I hardly met any Japanese people admitting that they ever visited one… Some seemed to be outsight disgusted that they even exist.
That was an interesting article that made me laugh a bit! Shows us how cultures can seem on the surface and how they really are beneath the surface.
And there is a lot beneath the surface in Japan!
Between culture that has such strong stereotyping for sexual/gender expectations, and if not arranged marriages, at least strongly pressured marriages. I’m not overtly surprised. When the last consideration of what makes a good marriage is that two people might actually love each other not the first, it often can’t end well.
From what I’ve studied, a lot of Japanese women are expected pre-marriage to act like cute little girls if they wish to be found attractive (The Kawaii culture) It must be very hard to know the actual PERSON you are going to marry, especially when you get married and this particular courting behavior ends and you meet the person, not the cultural expectation. Not that this phenomenon is unique to Japan, simply more pronounced.
Lastly the gay and lesbian people who get married because everyone is expected to, and it s a recipe for domestic suffering.