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The Yen For Sleeping Cheap; For the Budget Traveler in Japan, Hostels Can Make an Affordable Difference

Blaxland, Wendy

1989

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As with all youth hostels, you need only produce your valid membership card when you arrive. People of all ages are welcome, though most hostelers are young. Accommodation is usually in dormitories, usually segregated by sex. However, in many of the Japanese hostels, families or couples can arrange to stay together if the hostel isn't crowded. (Many Japanese hostels have a choice of western-style rooms with bunks or Japanese matted rooms, and while western travelers eagerly seek the Japanese rooms, Japanese hostelers invariably opt for exotic bunks.) Often dinner and breakfast are available, and sometimes it's possible to cook for yourself. Generally there are certain hours for checking in and out, and some hostels are closed between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. And though bedding is provided, you supply your own sleeping sheet (a sheet sewn up to make a sleeping bag, with a pouch for your pillow to slip into) or rent it from the hostel. Hostels in Japan-of which there are more than 500-are as varied as the country itself. In Tokyo we stayed in the modern opulence of a new office building; in Takayama, the hostel was part of a temple high on a hill overlooking the town. We stayed in a resortlike hostel on the shores of Lake Shikotsu Ko and, perhaps best of all, in an old thatched farmhouse converted into a hostel, way up in the green Japan Alps. Another interesting hostel is in Shikotsu-Toya National Park, on the island of Hokkaido on the shores of beautiful Lake Shikotsu Ko. No wonder this is a resort area-and a favorite suicide spot. The green-blue water is so clear you can see 10, perhaps 20 feet down to the pebbled lake bottom; mountains rise sheer all around, and the air sparkles. The Japanese escape in busloads to Shikotsu Ko, for a few hours away from their smoggy cities. But lucky hostelers can linger. A favorite ritual of ours was to step out of our hostel slippers onto smooth polished-wood floor ledges, then onto the tatami mats smelling of hay, and sit by the window looking across the lake as the late sun slanted through the white paper shutters.

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