Wait, you booked us in a Love Hotel?!!?

"Natural reflex
Pendulum swing
You might be too dizzy
To do the right thing"

Booking.com gets us some great deals, but we didn't see this one coming!

Anyway, before that plot twist, our intrepid adventurers were down at Irago Port ready to hop on the ferry to take them across the strait to Tobu.

We ran into a little snag, as the fog was so thick when we arrived, they couldn't see well enough to leave. It ended up just being delayed for about 30 minutes, which surprised us. I didn't think the fog could burn off as quickly as it did. It went from pea soup to clear in half an hour.

After a nice, relaxing and uneventful ferry ride, we were pedaling up the bay towards the town of Tsu, the capital of the Mie Prefecture, which we had just entered. Along the way we saw things ranging from silly to historic.

A boat advertising "Dolphin Touching" tours

The Futami Sea Paradise, a kid's water theme park

Take-Jinja, a famous Shinto shrine

Many old and historic buildings along the Ise Kaidõ

A largely forgotten Buddhist temple. The grounds were kept up, but the
main temple building and gate were worn and disused. 

Many homes had these charms above their front doors. I can't remember
what they were for. Any Japanese culture experts out there?

The ruins of Matsusaka Castle. The foundations and lower walls were largely intact,
though the yagura and other buildings were gone. A nice, shady side-quest

It was very hot. Japan is currently in a heat wave where it should be the beginning of the rainy season. Kyoto was at 94 today, we were at 88 and blistering sun in Mie. By the time we got to our destination, Tsu, all we could think about was a cool shower and something to drink. Then we arrived at our hotel.

You have got to be kidding....are those hourly rates??

Yes, Booking.com had, indeed, booked us overnight at a love hotel. For those of you who aren't familiar with this concept, let me, unfortunately, enlighten you. People in Japan often live with roommates or family in small homes where privacy is at a serious premium. So, if you are a couple and want to get intimate without spectators, there are hotels that offer rooms by the hour or some portion of the day. Now, these are NOT like the same kind of hotels in the states, which are dirty, seedy and generally full of drugs and/or prostitution. Granted, I'm sure there is some prostitution that takes place in these places, but all in all, they are generally pretty clean and, dare I say, upscale. If they weren't, they would be out of business in Japan.

All that said, we had never looked at booking one for a number of reasons:

1) We live in a big house by ourselves. Privacy is not a problem.
2) When we're in Japan on a bike trip, at the end of the day we are so hot, sticky, tired and awful-feeling, "getting frisky" is almost literally the LAST thing on our minds.
3) Cost. The sign above states ¥3200 per hour during the week.

and the list goes on. Yet here we were, with an obscenely low price (the reason we booked it) of $40 for the night, and no reason NOT to stay there (unless it was awful inside). So, we tentatively went inside to the front desk, which is manned 24 hours a day, but no one is there unless you hit a button (if you want to stay anonymous, you can pay in cash and never see a person). Spoke to a nice young lady who got us checked in. As we got off the elevator, there was a blinking sign pointing down the hallway to our room and a sign above our room blinking to show us where to go. We hesitantly opened the door

Huge room with marble floors, a karaoke machine, a 100" projection screen, a massage chair....

king-sized bed...

...aaaand a complementary "personal massager" complete with its own cord
hardwired to the bed and a special stand. And a condom on a platter....

We were at once aghast and amused. The room was even nicer than the luxury hotel we were just in. If you could ignore the.... interesting accouterments in the room, it was awesome!

full-sized jacuzzi

Beautiful bath with marble floor and countertops

...aaaand the creepy vending machine, just below your in-room refrigerator.

So, after laughing a lot at all of the "services" and vowing not to touch anything that we might be billed for, we hauled our stuff in, cleaned up and took a walk down to the local Coco Curry House for some dinner.

Green? Are those vegetables? It's been so long....

Vegetable and Beef Curry with extra rice

Happily full and still in disbelief, we headed back to our Rabu Hoteru and logged on to the best WiFi we've had on this trip and decided that we liked the place! Perhaps not all love hotels are this nice (I'm sure there are questionable ones out there), but Hotel Fine in Tsu makes our top ten in Japan!

Addendum: So, reading the in-room literature, it turns out that overnight stays are a new thing for love hotels, and it looks like they are using online booking sites, like Booking.com, to basically fill rooms that would be otherwise empty. They don't allow hourly bookings over night (from 9-6), so that is perfect for "normal" guests like us. They only lose a few hours in the afternoon/evening, and get a guaranteed room booked overnight. So, when looking into places to stay in Japan online, read the descriptions very carefully. Sumi missed the "adults only" tag on this one. In our case, it turned out great, but it may not work for you.