I recently had the good luck to visit something I've been dying to do since coming to Japan - stay in a Love Hotel. These types of hotels are scattered all throughout Japan (even in small, seedy towns or where there's demand) and are infamously known, as the name suggests, for making love in. What makes them even more conspicuous is the ability to rent them by the hour, so you can quickly get in an get out. Prices usually go for 2000-6000 yen per hour ($20-$60), or you can stay the night (after a certain time like 11:00pm) from around 6000-15000 yen per night ($60-$150). So Love Hotels not only attract couples looking for privacy, but poor backpackers looking for cheap accommodations on par with hostels.

One of the reasons Love Hotels are so popular are because many of the rooms are themed! I'll admit, that's one of the reasons I wanted to go. You can get rooms decorated as doctors offices, subway carriages, dungeons, castles, outer space, underwater, cosplay, Hello Kitty, mirrors, glass, Egyptian, to anything in between. A lot of the rooms (depending on the price) also have things like saunas, massage chairs, rotating beds, flashing lights, jacuzzi's with built-in TV's, karaoke boxes, and flat-screen TV's. By the time I got to the Love Hotel it was already after 2:00am and a lot of the rooms were already taken, so I settled on an outdoor-themed one with wood paneling, and a ceiling with silhouettes of branches and what appeared to be a dead squirrel. Mm, romantic. Another amazing feature about Love Hotels is that, Japan being a sexually discreet country, everything is automated! You don't meet a single person the entire time you're there.

Here's a quick "How To" if you ever want to visit a Love Hotel:

- Rooms are chosen from a panel at the entrance with pictures of all the rooms. A lit panel means the room is available, and hourly and overnight stay prices are listed. All you do is press and hold the button until the light goes off.
- Enter the room but don't be alarmed when the door locks behind you. It's to keep you from buggering off without paying!
- Relax. Take a bath, watch TV, and enjoy the complementary toiletry. Don't forget to take advantage of the sex toy vending machine.

There's a panel in the wall with a clock showing you how long you've been in the room and the price listed near it. The more hours you stay, the more you have to pay, so when you're ready to leave you:
- Look for the pneumatic tube and plastic container (yep, like those ones you see in the movies!)
- Fill out the form next to the tube with your info, time you entered, and time you will leave.
- Put the form into the plastic container along with your money.
- Load the container into the tube, press the vacuum button, and off it goes!
- Wait a few minutes, they'll unlock the door, and you'll receive the container back along with any change.

Overall, a relatively painless experience. If you happen to make a mistake or don't know what to do, you can call the front desk (there is one, you just never see the person working there.. but I'm pretty sure they can see you 0.0) and hope they speak English. They'll come to your door looking down and shame-faced and will explain to you how to go about paying. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures because I had forgotten my camera, but hopefully next time I'll be able to provide pictures. In the meantime, go look up "Love Hotels" on Google Images to see more of Japan's quirky (yet awesome) culture.

Snow has finally hit Japan! Well, northern Japan at least. It had been carpeting the mountains for the past few weeks but it's only just recently reached the ground (without melting). We got 20cm of snow in one night with a forecast for a whole lot more. Look!

So yeah, I'm pretty excited because it means my love Yuki-chan is back and I can ride her all Winter. No you sickos, "yuki" means snow in Japanese, and yep, that means snowboarding! This year I'm especially excited because I've decided to squash the travel bug that's been nagging at me for the past year and stay in Hokkaido for Winter vacation. First, I've decided to become more financially responsible so I'm cutting down on my overseas trips. Secondly, this is possibly my last year on JET *sad face* and thus, possibly my last chance to get carve up Hokkaido's sweet, fluffy powder. So, I've booked off days for my holidays and have an unadulterated, unprecedented 24 days off for Christmas vacation! That means over 3 weeks of wandering the island in my trusty Shuttle, 24 days of traveling to whatever ski hill I fancy, and 576 hours of potential snowboarding (barring lack of sleep and ski hill hours of operation). I already have a backcountry snowshoeing trip planned, a trip to some ski hills for opening day, and a few days in a cabin in Niseko... oh man, I'm drooling just thinking about it :P* I apologize ahead of time if my blog becomes a snowboarding travel blog over the next few months.. but I don't plan on doing much else!

Happy Winter! Let's have enjoying snow!

What do you get when you combine ghosts, pirates, vampires, samurai's, street fighter characters, Jack Skellington, Bat woman, cross-dressing maids and Care Bears blended together for a few hours of all-you-can-drink at an izakaya topped with karaoke? The best Halloween ever! This year, I spent an awesome 4-day weekend with good friends under the neon lights of the Susukino district in Sapporo.

The Saturday night Halloween started out at an izakaya with a good mix of foreigners and Japanese, some experiencing their first Halloween celebrations ever. Of the 35 people there, I only knew five or six costumed faces and the rest being friends of friends with someone there, making it the perfect chance to mix, match, and meet new people. With the drinks and food flowing freely, our three-hour izakaya swiftly ended before it was time to head to the nijikai at a local bar. The night air was chilly on the way but I was comfortably padded from the cold in my Care Bear costume/pajamas, making a perfect heater for those who didn't dress in one-piece costumes (namely.. everyone). After making an obligatory showing and staying long enough to socialize, a few of us made our escape and headed for the nearest purikura booth for mandatory Halloween photos and costume-themed crane games. I didn't have any luck getting a Care Bear keychain :( We finished off the night with an hour of karaoke at a Halloween-themed karaoke bar (year-round, not just because it was Halloween) named "Thriller" and sang the spookiest songs we could think of.. like "Time Warp", "Monster Mash", and the song no Japanese Halloween karaoke is complete without... "Thriller"! There aren't that many Halloween songs, are there? It was past 3:00am when we finished, our costumes were coming half-off, and we were all tired so we said our goodbyes, went home to crash, and slept late into the afternoon.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Eliza and Saul playing in playgrounds that would never have passed safety inspections back home, going to my first maid cafe (which was surprisingly a letdown and just full of cigarette smoke and overpriced drinks) and cat cafe (which is a place you pay to go pet cats... weird, no?), the Shiroi Koibito Park (which was not unlike Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory with it's quirky miniature houses, bubble fountains, and random displays and statues), and a few hours at Leisure Sport where you pay for all-you-can-have-fun (!) playing arcade games, riding mechanical bulls, doing American Gladiators-type courses, shooting hoops, and jamming on a drum kit in the music studio. What made the weekend so great was just being able to spend time with awesome friends and hanging out in the big city for a change. It'll be a tough Halloween to top next year!