Foreign Tourists Move Into Osaka Flophouses

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Asahi: Day laborers move out, foreigners move in
With its flophouses and other cheap hostelries, the Airin district of Nishinari Ward here had long attracted day laborers. But with the collapse of the nation's asset-inflated economy in the early 1990s, the market stagnated and management had to look elsewhere to fill rooms. Foreign tourists were part of the answer. Now, many of these facilities are being refurbished and advertised as guesthouses for budget travelers. One place that has proven popular, especially during the IAAF World Championships in Athletics Osaka held Aug. 25 through Sept. 2, is Hotel Chuo, located about 100 meters from JR Shin-Imamiya Station. A guest using a computer set up for the Internet in the hotel's lobby said he came to Osaka for the athletic meet. The 40-year-old American said he was satisfied with his 2,600-yen-per-night 3-tatami room equipped with air conditioning, a refrigerator and TV (right). The location was also convenient, he said, likening the area's atmosphere to downtown Los Angeles...more...

[Mulboyne]

[Catoneinutica]

[Mulboyne]

Oniazuma has posted a couple of videos on his site about this trend.

[Mulboyne]

Mainichi: Tokyo's Sanya district takes on new face as cheap hotels accept new guests

In the years of high economic growth after World War II, the Sanya district straddling Tokyo's Arakawa and Taito wards was a haven for day laborers. But now the area is starting to take on a new face, as aging laborers move on and foreigners, women and a wide range of other visitors take advantage of the cheap accommodation. On a recent visit to the area, a foreign couple carrying a convenience store bag arrived in front of the Economy Hotel Hoteiya in Taito-ku at about 9:30 p.m., pushing their young son along in a stroller. They said they came to Japan from Nepal. Recently the number of foreign people with families visiting the area has been increasing. Japanese family visitors are also common. "In the summer there are also lots of Japanese families looking to visit Tokyo Disneyland," said 57-year-old hotel head Tetsuo Kiyama. "There are people who don't know that the Japanese characters for this area are read 'Sanya' and they come asking, 'Is this Yamatani?' (another reading of the characters)."

From the 1970s to the "bubble" era of Japan's economy, the streets of Sanya prospered along with the daily lives of the laborers, and some simple lodging facilities including Hoteiya rebuilt their wooden lodgings into reinforced concrete structures resembling business hotels. After a long economic slump beginning from the 1990s, the cheap lodgings of the Sanya district attracted attention, and the number of foreign visitors increased. Recently, besides foreign guests, there has been an increasing number of traveling businessmen, women, students looking for work, and families who have come to Tokyo for the summer holidays. Major events in Tokyo, such as the Comic Market that was held in the metropolitan area in late August, have also attracted guests, with anime fans from around Japan staying in the area. Most of the rooms in Hoteiya are only the size of three tatami mats, sleeping two people. Some rooms actually have tatami mats, while others are laid out in a western style. The prices range between around 2,600 yen and 3,700 yen for a room each night.

In a visit at the end of August, the hotel, which has about 70 rooms, was fully booked. Hardly any of the day laborers that used to fill the facility are there now. Eighty percent of the guests are reportedly temporary workers or contract employees, while 20 percent are visitors. The length of their stays varies greatly -- from one night to "a few decades." Visitors appeared to find the hotel easy to use. One pair of tourists from France, aged 20 and 21, had already been staying there for a week. They said a French friend who had been to Japan told them about the hotel. The rooms in the hotel are small, they said, but easy to use in spite of the low price. They added that the hotel was conveniently close to the heart of the capital. The pair were able to reel off the names of several Japanese anime works such as "My Neighbor Totoro," "Princess Mononoke" and "Great Teacher Onizuka." They said they were fans of anime director Hayao Miyazaki's works.

Another guest at the hotel was a 26-year-old woman who had been staying there for over two weeks. She had come to Tokyo from Saga Prefecture as a seasonal worker. She reportedly had been staying at the hotel since mid-August as she underwent auditions for talent agencies with her sights set on becoming an actress. "When staying at my friend's place I would pay extra care as a guest," she said. "After I stayed here one night while checking out the rooms, it was comfortable so I decided to stay," she added with a laugh. The Web site of an association representing simple accommodation facilities in the Sanya district reportedly has many female visitors. "Men can stay at capsule hotels and sauna-equipped lodging facilities, but there are few places where women can stay cheaply," Kiyama explains. Now the operators of simple lodgings are growing old, and the time of their replacement is coming. "Lodgings in the Sanya district after the war started by accepting entertainers and families whose homes had been burned down. That turned into a town of laborers," Kiyama said. "Now various people such as those with families and young people are being accepted here. We may have gone back to old times."

[pheyton]

When I first went to Japan I stayed at a hostel in Yoyogi Olympic .... something. It was a 3 tatami room with a bed and cost about 2200yen a night. It worked great for me. I was right next to Shibuya and it was cheap. I found it odd though that there was a hostel right in the middle of some olympic complex.

If I were on my own I would definitely stay in Sanya. As the article says, you don't stay at the hotel, so why pay $125-$150 for a room you will only be sleeping in?

[GomiGirl]

When I first went to Japan I stayed at a hostel in Yoyogi Olympic .... something. It was a 3 tatami room with a bed and cost about 2200yen a night. It worked great for me. I was right next to Shibuya and it was cheap. I found it odd though that there was a hostel right in the middle of some olympic complex.

That place is still there. I think it was and still is used for visiting athlete quarters wanting to train in the area. A friend of mine (a teacher in rural Japan) said that when he brings the girls volleyball team to Tokyo for matches, they all stay there.

[Mulboyne]

[YT]YBPOvknvrEs[/YT]

[YT]RgCL6-uPUeU[/YT]

[Cyka UchuuJin]

my first stay in japan was at my friend's place not too far from shin-osaka. it was a huge 2 floor apartment with 3 bedrooms and i remember thinking 'that i couldn't understand why people kept warning me that japanese apartments were tiny. then when i returned 3 months later and moved into a weekly mansion (which was *maybe* 9m square at 3500\ per night), it became perfectly clear that what my friend was living in was a very generous expat-package deal, and that i was about to learn rather quickly that the difference between visiting japan and actually living there is as black and white as it gets.

[sublight]

I live in Minami Senju, and just about every day I see backpackers at the station. A lot of the hostels seem to have embraced the new clientele, and look like pretty cool places to stay.

[pheyton]

[YT]YBPOvknvrEs[/YT]

[YT]RgCL6-uPUeU[/YT]

Super! lol he met a guy in the hotel, took him to the local bar, full of guys. Super!

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Foreign tourist info center opens in day laborer district

A tourist information center catering to foreign visitors opened Monday on the first floor of a hotel in the Airin district of Nishinari Ward, Osaka--an area long popular with day laborers. Students, including foreign students, who study at the international communication faculty of Hannan University will be based at the center in the Hotel Chuo for a month and provide tourist information in English, Chinese and Korean from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Sunday. Tourism in the area by young backpackers and other budget conscious travelers has been increasing over the past five years, in part because of the numerous lodging facilities there priced between 1,000 yen and 2,000 yen per night. A committee comprising operators of the lodging facilities opened the tourist information center to provide leaflets and maps of Osaka and requested the cooperation of Prof. Yoshihisa Matsumura of Hannan University, who is gathering information about foreign visitors who use budget accommodation. Munehiro Nishiguchi, 48, chairman of the committee, said the tourist information center would be made permanent if the committee receives positive feedback about the facility.

[kusai Jijii]

Super! lol he met a guy in the hotel, took him to the local bar, full of guys. Super!

Judging from the way he speaks, his cute little bag, and the amount of product in his hair, that's exactly what he would have wanted.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Judging from the way he speaks, his cute little bag, and the amount of product in his hair, that's exactly what he would have wanted.

Listen to the accent. He's not gay, he's Canadian.

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: 'Closet houses' give shelter to growing ranks of urban poor

Behind a row of doors in a narrow corridor of a Tokyo multitenant building, there is a set of lodgings that gives almost literal meaning to the notion of living in a cupboard. Here, tenants squeeze their worldly possessions into a space measuring just 80 centimeters by 180 cm--even smaller than one tatami mat--for a monthly rent of 27,000 yen, including utilities, or 900 yen a day. Each of the smallest rooms in this building, in the Asakusa district of Tokyo's Taito Ward, contains just enough space for the average adult to stretch out and sleep. The height of each compartment, located one above the other, is 90 cm. There is no window, so when the fluorescent light is turned off, the room is in complete darkness. Day and night, the sounds of sneezing and snoring travel freely through the thin walls. Cramped budget inns such as this one are increasing in number across Tokyo amid the deepening economic malaise.

Taking up residence in the "closet houses" is a growing underclass of people looking for the cheapest possible alternative to living on the street. On Monday morning, a 25-year-old student from Uzbekistan appeared from one of the rooms. "I've overslept," the student said as he hurried to a wash basin. No key money or gratuity is required from residents, who share showers, toilets and a kitchen. Over the past decade, the 40-year-old landlord here bought up seven properties sold under the order of judicial sale across Tokyo. He then remodeled them as budget inns made up of "closet houses" and slightly larger two tatami-mat compartments. As a globe-trotting backpacker in his student days, the man dreamed of building cheap guest houses for foreigners in Japan.

Until the financial crisis struck, his customers were mostly students from China and South Korea. Now half of them are Japanese "freeters" in their 20s through 50s, while the other half are students on working holiday programs from Europe. "I just need a place to sleep," said a 27-year-old student from Okinawa Prefecture who works at a software development company and dreams of starting his own business. "It would be a waste to pay (an expensive) rent." In the Kinshicho district in Tokyo's Sumida Ward, a 39-year-old real estate businessman runs similar lodgings for struggling tenants. Most of the people living in his two tatami-mat rooms are in their 30s through 60s, and many are scratching out a living on welfare benefits. At least one of his inns caters exclusively to women.

The man frequently receives inquiries from people living in the countryside who seek jobs in Tokyo. "Tokyo's economy is in bad shape," he says, "but life in the country seems worse." So cheap is the latest wave of lodgings that older budget inns have lost some of their appeal. The Sanya district in Tokyo's Taito Ward is dotted with worn signs that read "2,200 yen per night," "air conditioned" and "color TV in each room." At the cheapest inn, a shared room costs 900 yen per person per night, according to an official at the district's association of inn operators. About 80 percent of customers are on welfare.

A private room costs more than 2,500 yen per night, which works out to more than 70,000 yen for a month-long stay. In recent years, many lodgings in the district have been refurbished to attract foreign travelers and students instead of day laborers. As spring holidays have begun, there is a constant flow of families visiting from out of town, student groups and university students in suits seeking work, the official said. Tetsuo Kiyama, who operates the Hoteiya budget inn, said lodgings in the Sanya district had become, relatively speaking, expensive for the growing ranks of Internet cafe "refugees." Kiyama, 58, said Internet cafes and comic cafes in urban centers, where people with no fixed residence and often no regular jobs stay overnight, had become modern-day flophouses.