Home Sweet Home (or not)

Lately in Japan, I've favored what they call "weekly mansion" style studio apartment facilities over hotels. Now keep in mind, "mansion" is about as mansion-esque as a "limousine bus" is limousine-esque. :-) Most importantly, these things feature at least a small kitchen (my "kitchen" pictured at right), so I can prepare my own meals and hence save a ton of money. They also feature either in-room or coin-op laundry facilities on site, also saving quite a bit of money.

What's more is that they are typically CHEAPER than hotels. Most of them do not have a concierge desk nor room service nor any of those other "niceties" of hotels; therefore, I couldn't in good faith recommend them to foreign guests who do not speak Japanese.

And woohoo... check out the tiny bathroom pic on the left. With a mere twist of that faucet you can either fill the sink or fill the tub; what an efficient "feature." As with everything in life, weekly mansions come in all shapes, sizes, and budgets. The one I'm staying at on this trip (Weekly Mansion Tokyo Akasaka) is really quite cheap, old, somewhat dirty, and ANYTHING but fancy. In fact, it feels very much like a pretty low-end college or company dorm (company dorms are somewhat common in Japan). Out in the corridors, the flooring is an immaculate, fancy CONCRETE. The door to my room is only about 5'8" and I have to duck going in. But... this place is less than $100 per night even with the horribly weak dollar right now. The very moderate ANA Intercontinental Hotel just a 5-minute walk from here would run $300/night!

There's also quite a bit of "riffraff" here that you wouldn't find at the nearby ANA, but hey... I suppose that's part of the ambiance. Below is a panoramic shot of most of the glorious 24 square meters (258 square feet) that occupies my "home" this week. In both this shot and the bathroom shot above, the panoramic stitching utility I used sort of whigged out, but you get the idea. It will be really nice to get back to my REAL home on Thursday!!!