Like so many things in Japan, Vince learned about love hotels from several sources on the same day. It was a Friday and it started with a snippet on a morning television programme while he was eating breakfast. It showed dozens of couples in their late teens and early twenties lined up outside a Love Hotel in Shibuya, which was all the rage because each room had a select number of video games. Mirrors on the ceiling were now out, the announcer informed Vince, and video games were in. While he did wonder what sort of video games young couples might play in a Love Hotel, Vince did feel that the idea of mirrors held a subtle attraction.
It seemed that everyone had just discovered Love Hotels at the same time as Vince. Once he arrived at his daytime job, one of the American teachers, Kath, told an assembled group how shocked she had been when a male Japanese friend had suggested that they go to a Love Hotel. She concluded with absolute repugnance that: "... these places only exist for people to have sex." How uncouth! Vince himself could see nothing at all repulsive about hotels that existed just for sex. But one of the Japanese teachers, Mariko-sensei, had overheard Kath's tirade and saw fit to take Vince aside to better explain that Love Hotels weren't just for sex. Travellers used them on long trips to catch up on a couple of hours of sleep. Young mothers with small children also found them convenient when they had to spend a day in the city. And many, many married couples found them convenient ... "... because Japanese homes are very small and there are certain things that are very hard to do when your children and your parents are in the same room." Vince had been in enough family homes to sympathise. He knew that there weren't a lot of places to enjoy marital bliss, once the children got to a certain age. And before they got to that age, it was traditional for the father to sleep on the left side, the mother on the right and the children in the middle. It must have been the most effective contraceptive in Japan. He knew that both the Matsumotos and the Atsukawas bedded down in this sort of arrangement. It was little wonder that the birth rate in Japan was declining. Indeed, it seemed to be a matter of as much wonderment to the Atsukawas as to the Patchworks just how the Matsumotos had managed to have their third child.
As for premarital sex, Vince was all for it, AIDS and unwanted babies aside. As with any culture, courting in Japan had its own peculiar rituals. Girls had no compunction about having sex with a man on the same night they met, they just wouldn't go to Tokyo Disneyland on the first date. One of Yokohama's all-star attractions was the Bay Bridge, which was the country's number one lover's lane. It was bumper to bumper all the way onto the bridge and a quick check of car number plates indicated that young lovers had come from Hiroshima, Akita, Hokkaido and Kagoshima, for this special moment. Vince and Connie had stopped on the bridge once and discovered the view wasn't the greatest. If you looked down below, you were greeted by the sight of stacks of rusty shipping containers. They didn't see much hugging and kissing. Young lovers usually had a third person with them to drive the car and take photos. Police cars patrolled the bridge with blaring speakers asking people to move on, although no one took any notice of them. The romantic days of the year were Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. On these nights, you couldn't book a hotel in the town, business or love, minshuku or ryokan, Tokyo Hilton or Happy Stay. So strong was this trend that when Connie had asked her primary school English class when Christmas was, they had told her that it was on 24th. December. And there was no convincing them otherwise. Vince had decided that he could leave the video games to the teenagers, but the thought of those mirrors on the ceiling, that was something else. After all, Vince considered himself something of a romantic and Connie could have vouched that their best sex had always occurred outside the confines of their own bedrooms. That afternoon, Vince and Connie were driving along the Tomei Expressway in a car they'd borrowed from the Atsukawas to visit Mount Fuji for a weekend away from home when they spotted not just one but a series of Love Hotels at the Yokohama Interchange. They hung over the highway in gawdy designs - Cinderella castles or Turkish palaces. And they had names to match. Freedom Shower, Hotel Seeds.They sounded like yet another Japanese joke at the expense of the English Language. Hotel Seeds, one billboard claimed, was evidently famous for its Creative Rooms. And then there was the Queen Elizabeth, a hotel in the shape of a luxury liner. Vince hoped that the real Queen Elizabeth looked more ship-shape than this one. If nothing else, it needed a paint job.
"We ought to go to one, some day," Vince suggested.
"Go to what?" Connie asked.
"A Love Hotel!" "Whatever for?" "Well, I'm told that they're ... er ... different." "You haven't been trying them out, have you, Vince?" "No, of course not." "So, what have you heard?" "Oh, just that some have video games and ..." inc "Oh, video games.! That's great. We'd just go out of our way to get to a hotel, so we could play video games." "They have other things," Vince muttered. "They sometimes have mirrors on the ceilings." But Connie wasn't listening, "You don't even like video games." It wasn't until a month later when Connie decided to take him out for dinner in Shibuya on his birthday that Vince got his wish. He insisted that they also lash out on a Love Hotel. Unfortunately, when it came to finding one, neither knew where to start. They could hardly call into the local police box and ask them to recommend a Love Hotel, specifically one with mirrors. And what would they do if they happened to stumble into one that had those awful video games. He'd probably never get Connie into another Love Hotel in her life.
In the end, they walked through the back streets of Shibuya and took pot luck. They strolled into a modest-looking establishment called Wons Inn. Vince joked that once in, you never got out again. A pair of hands behind an opaque screen took their money and slid a key towards them. Vince reflected that he could very well have been placing a bet at the TAB. They took the elevator to the fourth floor. It was called the fifth floor, because four is an unlucky number in Asia. Each of the rooms had a red light on the outside to indicate whether they were occupied or not. The light outside their own room was flashing to hasten them inside. It was there that the excitement stopped.
To Vince's total dismay, the room was exactly the same as a thousand second class hotel rooms around the world. He had even seen the same blue movie, about two girls who were raped by three men and a video camera, in a business hotel room in Kyushu. And far from mirrors on the ceiling, there was cracking plaster. Vince stared at them for several moments, hoping that mirrors would magically appear. He tried all the buttons on the bed head and the walls, but they were evidently not for the sliding panels that concealed the mirrors. They were for the TV, the bedside light, the alarm clock and there was one button which seemed to be for nothing at all. Vince even checked the bathroom mirror to see if it had ceiling attachments.
Vince was not the sort of man who was so easily defeated. On their wedding anniversary two weeks later, he borrowed the Atsukawa's car again and drove across to the Yokohama Interchange to find the Hotel Queen Elizabeth Sekitei. Vince wondered if the ruling British monarch knew that there was a Love Hotel named after her or rather named after her boat. Whether her majesty knew or not, Vince was convinced that the Queen Elizabeth in the shape of an ocean liner, would surely be regal enough inside to have mirrors on the ceiling.
Nozomi Atsukawa had been delighted when she'd heard about their romantic sojourn. She gave Connie a bottle of wine and armed Vince with a special energy drink. Osamu was less enthusiastic. He kept warning Vince: "They have video cameras in those places. Private detectives, too." "So, they're going to film me having sex with my wife. Imagine what Kiichi Miyazawa's going to do when he finds out. He'll deport both of us, for sure." If Wons Inn had been discreet, the Queen Elizabeth was even more so. There was even a rubber strip to lay over your number plates. Vince hadn't bothered to put the slab of rubber up over the plate and it was only later that he realised that, as it was Osamu's car, they would have assumed his farmer friend was inside.
The reception area seemed more like a confessional. There were two elevators, one only took passengers going up while the other was for people going down. And never would the twain meet. Vince was surprised to discover that once you got off the first level, the Queen Elizabeth looked more like a luxury liner on the inside than it did on the outside.
The room had everything - a walking exerciser, bar fridge, sauna, spa bath, video karaoke set, room service delivery meals, three cylinder ten speed toilet and twelve different types of hair tonic. Their room, 104, was right in the bow with a proper porthole. It had everything, everything but mirrors on the ceiling. Connie made the mistake of giving Vince his genki drink to try to relax him and it took all her strength to stop him going downstairs and smashing in the confessional. "We'll go somewhere else, dear." "Where?" "I don't know where, but we'll find some place. They can't have all taken down their mirrors." "It's taken three months to ...," and then as if in a vision he remembered. "Seeds. Hotel Seeds. Creative rooms. Tell me, Connie, creative rooms would have to have mirrors on the ceilings, wouldn't they?" "I suppose they would." "Let's go!" "But ..." "Now!" "But ..." "There's not a moment to lose." "Vince, let's enjoy this first. We have paid for it ... and it's not that bad. Even without the mirrors." Connie managed to get Vince to hold out until her birthday, a month later and, for better or worse, talked Vince out of ringing up about the mirrors first. Of course, Hotel Seeds was not quite as up-market as the Queen Elizabeth nor were the rooms nearly as creative. The bathroom was designed on the open look plan, so that you could either watch your partner bathing or watch television while you yourself were bathing. For shy patrons, there were roller blinds that could be drawn down for privacy. Everything was inscribed with the name of the hotel. Seeds glasses, Seeds toothbrushes, Seeds razors, Seeds pillow slips, Seeds towels and wash cloths, even Seeds condoms.
Alas, there were no mirrors and, at last, Vince was convinced that every mirror had been traded in on brand new video games. Not that he saw any of the video games either. They plugged into the karaoke system and sang Ichi en dama no tabigarasu twice, had a couple of glasses of wine and made love totally unreflected except in each other's eyes.
"I guess it would have put me off anyway," Vince admitted.
St. Valentine's Day was not a particularly romantic time in Japan. Women gave chocolate to all the men in their lives, most particularly their bosses, teachers and fathers. The menfolk were meant to reciprocate on White Day on 14th. March, although not all did.
Connie had been 27 before she even knew when St. Valentine's Day was. On that day, Vince had handed her a half dozen blood red roses. She had never actually given him anything, but this year she made an exception. She told Vince to close his eyes and led him into the tatami room. When he opened his eyes again, there was a mirror the size of a king size bed leaning against the wall. "Happy Valentine's Day, darling," Connie kissed him on the side of the cheek. "I would have put it on the ceiling myself, but I'm afraid I couldn't get it up by myself. It's a two person job. I hope we've got all the tools." It was a large and strenuous job to bolt the mirror to the ceiling. At last, it was firmly attached and Vince was rubbing off the finger marks muttering, "I hope we don't have any bloody earthquakes." Alas, mirrors on the ceiling posed a mathematical problem for the Patchworks. If you were doing anything, you couldn't watch and if you weren't doing anything, there was nothing to watch. It was obvious to Connie's embarrassment that the Atsukawas, Matsumotos and countless other Japanese visitors guessed exactly what the ceiling mirror was for. Vince soon took it down and sold it for a pittance to the local secondhand shop. Connie and he had discussed it, a video camera would be far better value.