Japanese Hotel Room Costs $1 a Night -- If You'll Livestream Yourself (cnn.com) 46
"Guests coming to Asahi Ryokan have the option to pay just ¥100 (about $1) per night to stay the night -- if they agree to have their entire stay livestreamed," reports CNN:
[T]here are restrictions around how the livestreaming works. [27-year-old manager] Tetsuya Inoue explains to CNN Travel that the feed is video-only, so guests will have privacy in their conversations or phone calls...
Guests are permitted to turn the lights off, and the bathroom area is out of camera range.
"This is a very old ryokan [traditional Japanese hotel] and I was looking into a new business model," says Inoue, who started running the hotel last year. "Our hotel is on the cheaper side, so we need some added value, something special that everyone will talk about." So far, four guests have taken him up on the offer since Inoue began offering the deal last month.
"Young people nowadays don't care much about the privacy," Inoue adds. "Some of them say it's OK to be [watched] for just one day."
Inoue ultimately hopes to monetize the YouTube channel, according to CNN . (Though it currently appears to be down.)
But Inoue told CNN that when the hotel room is vacant, he plans to just livestream himself, working in his office.
Guests are permitted to turn the lights off, and the bathroom area is out of camera range.
"This is a very old ryokan [traditional Japanese hotel] and I was looking into a new business model," says Inoue, who started running the hotel last year. "Our hotel is on the cheaper side, so we need some added value, something special that everyone will talk about." So far, four guests have taken him up on the offer since Inoue began offering the deal last month.
"Young people nowadays don't care much about the privacy," Inoue adds. "Some of them say it's OK to be [watched] for just one day."
Inoue ultimately hopes to monetize the YouTube channel, according to CNN . (Though it currently appears to be down.)
But Inoue told CNN that when the hotel room is vacant, he plans to just livestream himself, working in his office.
I need to go to Japan immediately (Score:5, Funny)
A dollar a day to make a bunch of people watch me jack off? I was *born* for this mission.
Re: (Score:2)
Japanese hotels are notoriously bad in the first place (Old, stuck in the 90s, small, barren, smelly, 90% are smoking rooms, always annoyingly over-staffed to keep unemployment low).
And I don't see the allure of a $1 a day Ryokan, considering most Ryokans across Japan are pretty cheap anyways. But I can already see some Japanese weirdos doing this.
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"Japanese hotels are notoriously bad in the first place (Old, stuck in the 90s,"
He means the 1590s.
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90% of the rooms are smoking because 90% of the people there smoke. Smoke in restaurants, smoke in trains and subways, a wildfire column of smoke rising above every desk in the bullpen at work.
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I can't speak to Japan as a whole, but in Tokyo there was certainly no smoking on subways and trains last year when I was there. Nor in hotel lobby, train station, or restaurants.
Pachinko halls and the like were another story of course.
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My information is firsthand but by now rather old. Things could have changed since 1978.
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"True" Ryokans are expensive, by that I mean the traditional ones, with a full meal. $150 *per person* or more is to be expected.
But this doesn't appear to be the case here. It looks like a regular hotel with Japanese style rooms, you won't get the full experience by staying there, livestreaming or not.
Bring the dildos! (Score:2)
Let them have a real Goatse experience!
Get some gimp and have him eat your shit! Have the audience throw up, at the very least!
Damn, I could make the hotel stop offering this, by tomorrow! :D
Kickstarter anyone?
Pretty good deal. (Score:5, Funny)
Went there, slept, left. The wife and the three mistresses watched and are content I'm not cheating. Had sex elsewhere with the saved money. Would do it again.
Spoiled: no cameras in the bathroom.
Re: Pretty good deal. (Score:1)
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Is that how you do it? No, I don't spend time in shitholes where saving bandwidth is a concern.
Re: Pretty good deal. (Score:1)
Correct YouTube Feed (Score:5, Informative)
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This is how websites get their videos (Score:1)
The bathroom is too small to get the freaky on.
Allowing you to have the lights off everywhere else doesnt mean much when night vision cameras exist and if you have the lights off youre probably not getting the freaky on or doing it with someone that you want to see their body and face.
So they charge you $1 for the night and sell the video for hundreds even thousands to balance the books.
Japanese social breakdown (Score:4, Interesting)
Hikikomori [wikipedia.org] "are reclusive adolescents or adults who withdraw from society and seek extreme degrees of isolation and confinement."
Majority of single Japanese men in their 30s have never had relationship with marriage prospects: poll [japantimes.co.jp].
Japan has emperors [wikipedia.org].
The young Japanese working themselves to death [bbc.com] "He usually worked until the last train, but if he missed it he slept at his desk,"
Re:Japanese social breakdown (Score:4, Informative)
The emperor invaded China and bombed Pearl Harbor. (Score:2)
Japan emperor performs secretive $25m dollar ritual 'where he sleeps with goddess' [independent.co.uk] (Nov. 14, 2019)
Emperor Hirohito [atomicheritage.org] was emperor when Japan attacked China and the United States.
War in China: "The emperor's office apparently signed off on uses of chemical weapons during the war in China."
Attacked the United States: "He
Re: The emperor invaded China and bombed Pearl Har (Score:2)
Japanese emperor: Please give your understanding. (Score:2)
Re: Japanese emperor: Please give your understandi (Score:2)
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No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger, everyone
That's why I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so...
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Hikikomori [wikipedia.org] "are reclusive adolescents or adults who withdraw from society and seek extreme degrees of isolation and confinement."
Nerds?
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Japan conviction rate exceeds 99%. (Score:2)
Japan resumes commercial whaling. (Score:2)
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And the United Kingdom has a queen. I don't really see the point of this line, especially when your other items are sufficient to carry the point. As far as I know, the modern Japanese emperor serves a similar function as the Queen does.
Josh Harris says hi (Score:2)
No lewd act (Score:3)
When staying, you are not allowed to show any "lewd act" in front of the camera.
Back in 2011, a porn magnate wanted to launch the opposite: Free hotel stay if you had sex in front of cameras [cbsnews.com]. He said that he had got good response when talking about it at a couple swingers' clubs, and wanted launch a hundred hotels all over the world. .. He had a fifty million dollar debt in unpaid taxes, and was forced out of his media group for poor performance not long after the announcement.
Not a single hotel was built
But if it had been realised, would it have been a success or a flop?
Re: No lewd act (Score:1)
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I think launching 100 of those type of hotels around the world would be far too risky an undertaking. But yes, would certainly be a big money-maker if ONE was started in the right area, coupled with a web site with reasonable subscription rates or "per view" fees.
There's a not-so-tiny subset of the population who are into exhibitionism who would stay at such a place with the thrill of being watched as the main attraction.
You'd probably need to invest enough money up-front, though, so people were re-assured
Would be boring... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume a random person is watching me in this hotel room -
Oh look he took off his shoes...
He is eating an pizza and soda he ordered...
Now he's sitting on a chair reading "Second Story Man" (by Ugland) on his tablet...
Now he's watching "Travelers" on Netflix...
He's yawning...
He's typing something on Slashdot...
He went to bed, and **scrunched** the hotels pillows. (Do hotels get upset with people that scrunch pillows?)
I don't know who would want to watch a random person in a hotel. Real life is generally boring and banal except to the individual that is living it. The only thing more boring is a non-programmer watching a programmer work on coding / testing.
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Actually just eating chicken while watching TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But more importantly, that's supposed to be a hotel? It looks like a mess (a very messy) poor person's apartment.
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It is right under the video, "Room of the hotel owner Innotech". So it is not a common room that you gonna end up in.
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Well actually right under the video is a crapton of Japanese text. It's under that text,... which is why I didn't scroll down ;-)
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I think this has to do with Japanese culture more than anything. I am far from an expert on it, mind you, but I did have my share of interactions with Japanese people and I think I might start to understand the appeal.
Maybe it's a craving of closeness. You get to see someone do something "ordinary", something private. That's usually not on display in Japan. And more and more Japanese people do not have a family to speak of where you could have such moments with others, so watching people be "private" may ac
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reminiscent of this video (Score:1)
Hotel Jennicam (Score:4, Insightful)
Only the old-timers will understand when I say this is like a Jennicam Hotel.
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I dropped into the comments to say this myself. Seems another old-timer beat me to it.
I would be nonstop naked (Score:2)