Love Hotels: A central pin of J tax base?

Ah, it's Valentines day. Always amusing to see hoards of hapless men grabbing flowers and cards at Target and other stores.

I should note that Valentines day in Japan, like many things, is different than the US. In Japan, it is a day when men get treats from women. Men return the favor on "White day", March 14, which is more like the US version of Valentines day. So in Japan, both both men and women have a day to get gifts. Another interesting tid bit...you're supposed to give small gifts to friends/co-workers people, even if you don't like them romantically. People often given small boxes of chocolates, sometimes referred as "giri choco" which means "obligation chocolates" although some say "friendship chocolates" would be a more correct translation. For more on this see this discussion on giri choco

On a related note, here are some snips from an interesting piece on Japanese love hotels and interest in them by foreign investors.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/10898917.htm?1c

Prospect of big profits lures foreign investors to Japan's love hotels

The hotels are no small affair for Japan, though. Numbering some 19,000, love hotels are a pillar of Japan's economy, thought to provide more tax revenue than all other industries except pachinko parlors, the noisy betting venues filled with pinball-like games.
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Sky-high real estate prices in Japan help shed light on the abundance of love hotels. The country's 120 million people crowd together in a land the size of California. Many families live with several generations cramped under one roof. Researchers say that more than half the love-hotel clientele is married couples or young unmarried couples with nowhere to go.

"In the suburbs, married couples use the love hotels to be romantic. Since they live together with grandma and grandpa, and with their children, they don't have privacy," said Jiro Miura, a commentator from the Love Hotel Total Research Office, a consultancy.

Major Japanese banks, for the most part, see the love-hotel industry as unsavory. Other lending agencies have let foreigners tread first. Sniffing for opportunities, investors such as Mijatovic are scouting love hotels for signs of distressed ownership and tallying the couples entering each day as a way to estimate revenues.

What they say they've found is an industry any investor could cherish.

Most love hotels are mom-and-pop businesses with an average of 10 to 25 rooms, although some have as many as 80. Chains are few, usually with no more than two dozen hotels each. In general, rooms rent for two or three hours, averaging about $66 a stay. Overnight stays are possible at a higher rate.

The average love-hotel room rents two and a half times per day, Mijatovic said. For a 40-room hotel, monthly revenue can come close to $200,000, he said. Profit margins routinely run at 45 percent.
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Some rooms don't easily fit into Western notions of romance.

Flipping through a photo album of renovated "love hotels," Sasaki comes across one room that's a shrine to the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, replete with a neon "Home run!" sign. Other theme rooms exalt Budweiser beer and the characters Snoopy and Hello Kitty.
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Newer hotels try to offer memorable experiences.

Off the lobby of the P&A Plaza Hotel in Tokyo's bustling Shibuya district, a manager, Naohito Kurose, surveys the backlit displays of photos of revealing costumes that clients can have delivered to their rooms through vacuum tubes.

Nearly all are for women. They include cheerleader and sexy sailor outfits, low-cut tennis dresses, kimonos, beer hall fraulein get-ups and a red Santa's elf number.

"Couples come here and have fun picking out the costumes," Kurose said. "This may be unique to Japan, but the (girls') high school uniform is the most popular. The nurse's outfit is the second most popular."

Each room at the hotel includes menus for delivery of Domino's Pizza or KFC.