Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Around the Neighborhood

Over the past weekend, we celebrated our One Year Anniversary of living abroad in Okinawa. 

It's been a fast and crazy year with all the big changes in our daily lives-- driving on the left side of the road, learning Japanese, and discovering 100 yen stores, but it's been fun too.

One of the funny things we remember about moving to our apartment last year was that we happened to find ourselves in a peculiar part of town. During the day, it's your average hillside island community with gorgeous vistas of the ocean and cool breezes.  

Imagine our surprise to discover at night, the neon comes out full force! That's right, we found ourselves living smack in the middle of Love Hotel Alley. 

What are love hotels? Fascinating places really as we learned from our investigation. We toured our neighborhood and made this video of our favorites along with some cultural information about them. It should be clarified these are our "favorites" from the outside only. We have yet to pay our hourly charge and actually go inside! 

For a larger screen, check out the youtube version.




9 comments:

Heather @CritterChronicles said...

I love it! Have you seen the one outside Gate 3 (KAB), a little way past Chibana housing, with a gigantic gorilla on top? I'd love to go on an ITT tour of Love Motels sometime... I'm not brave enough to actually rent a room in one. Yet. ;-)

Carrie Stuart said...

Wow...you guys settled in the middle of lovers alley!? How appropriate for the newlyweds, lol! I just love learning about the things that make each culture so unique!

Tom D said...

Ok, so now you HAVE to go inside one! You don't necessarily have to use it for it's intended purpose, but I am dying to know what one looks like on the inside. Just can't make up my mind on which one - the space themed one seems like it has potential for being the wackiest, but the "Silk Road" could be in the running as well. I wonder if the theme remains INSIDE the rooms, or if it's just a gimmick to get you in the door, so to speak. That Honey Pot one seemed to be a little more on the "Motel 6" end of the spectrum. I'm imagining a futon and a pot of tea with 2 little hooks on the wall to hang your clothes on...

bingata744 said...

I love your posts! The last hotel had a tanuki (badger/raccoon dog) holding what may be a jar of saki. Tanuki are folklore animals. Great fun to live in the midst of all of that! Love Okinawa!

[LA] said...

THANKS FOR MAKE THIS POST!!!











lainarollercoaster.blogspot.com

... said...

I haven't stayed in one here on the island but I did stay in a really nice one in Taiwan...I think they are all pretty similar. This was a 7 star hotel so the room was pretty snazzy...we had a blast with the jacuzzi bigger than my bed at home and the karaoke right in the room on the big screen TV!!

Amanda K said...

Happy 1 Year Anniversary of living abroad!!

Mary and Sean said...

bingata744,

Thanks for reading and clarifying the strange love hotel motif quandary!

aviva5271 said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanuki

I saw this video again on Oki Hai and it reminded me to show you this! It's a Tanuki statue :)

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