Love Motel

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So Kelly and I got to Kobe somewhere right around midnight after navigating the subway systems to the closest station we could find to our station.  I had a pretty good map on my Blackberry and we had the phone number and everything, just in case.  So we started looking around, and we just couldn’t find it.  We found all the places that looked just like it on the map, and crawled around some alleys hoping to find it, but we couldn’t do it.  After looking for a while, we decided it was time to ask for help.

 

A Japanese couple was walking by the shopping alley right then, maybe 25 years old each or so.  The guy was wearing a blue jacket with “Diving Instructor” written on it, which I didn’t know until later, but was a hint that he might know a bit of English.  Kelly went up to them and asked as best she could in Japanese where our hostel was.  After a minute or so, they understood what was happening.  “Hotel?”  the guy asked?  I said yes, “Hostel,” and pantomimed sleeping.  They used the map on my BlackBerry to look around.

 

We continued communicating the best we could, and looked for a while – maybe twenty or thirty minutes they stayed with us – but we couldn’t find it.  They told us “Closed.”  But as if they weren’t really sure – not that they had found it and it was closed, but maybe the stuff was outdated and it had closed.  I showed them the website of the place in Japanese to see if that could help, but it didn’t really do anything for us.  They suggested finding another hotel or motel, and pointed to a place that was a good way away on the map.  Kelly and I were not down for that walk at midnight, and then the walk back the next day at six.  So we pointed to a hotel with a banner up high in the air, Hotel Tiffany or something like that.  The couple insisted they walk there with us.

 

We looked at the sign outside the door.  It was one of those places, apparently, that you can rent by the hour if you want to.  We only needed six hours, so Kelly and I asked if we could rent it for that long, but apparently we needed to ask for an overnight rate.  The couple took us inside and talked to the innkeeper for us.  They pointed at the cheapest overnight rate possible, which was something like Y3700, or about $40.  They didn’t take credit cards, so I paid in yen and Kelly have me $20 in America.  After we paid, the innkeeper pointed to a group of six cans on the desk.  I thought they were asking if we wanted to buy any, so we said no, but they said “Free,” and the guy of the couple said what each one was like for us.  I took one that had a melon flavor.  I forget what Kelly took.

 

They walked us up to our room on the fourth floor.  The light above the room blinked, meaning we could go in.  We thanked them as profusely as we could (again), and we got their addresses and names the best we could.  I think Kelly still has their information… somehow I lost it.  Or maybe it’s somewhere in a pants pocket that I just haven’t checked yet.  We’re going to try to email them or send them a postcard or something.  But seriously, they were amazingly nice, and spent almost an hour helping out people they knew nothing about at midnight on a Thursday when they had apparently planned to just spend the night together.

 

Kelly and I opened the door as soon as they’d gone down the elevator.  There was only one bed.

 

I just looked to her and said, comically, “Oh no!”  Nothing happened though, Kelly and I aren’t like that.  But we did watch some Japanese TV in bed before we went to sleep.

 

Oh, yeah, even though most of the room was fairly run-down and sort of shabby/cheap, the TV was HUGE and also flat-screen.  We both wondered about it, and took a picture.