Traveling on a budget like I am, you need to be flexible — like water, flowing to fit wherever you're kept.
You slip into cracks, adjusting to the shape of whatever vessel holds you. Sometimes you’re clear and tranquil, other times muddied by circumstances beyond your control.
The cycle of constant movement, never quite settling, is tough. Just as you begin to grow comfortable in a place, it’s time to pour yourself into another, leaving behind the familiarity you were just beginning to claim as home.
Enough with the metaphor, for now. The point is, not all accommodations are created equal.
Some places are pristine, modern, spacious. Others, though older, carry the weight of time in a way that makes you feel like you've stepped into a relic of old Japan as you’ve only yet seen in anime, imbued with character and warmth.
Sometimes, you’ll be met with kindness — a host who carries your suitcase up three flights of stairs before you even realize it’s a burden. Other times, you’ll be left hauling it up yourself, step by step, feeling every ounce of its weight.
And then there are places that do nothing more than exist, offering only four walls and a bed. Like that one room with 24 beds, thick with the scent of too many travelers in too small a space — far from ideal, but still enough to stay afloat.
How a place feels isn’t just about the place itself, though, and oftentimes it’s shaped by the bias of the last place you left behind. A great stay makes an average one feel like a downgrade. An average one, after something terrible, can feel like a blessing.
As long as it’s liveable, like all of our stays so far have thankfully been, you learn to focus on the good and stay content. But sometimes, just sometimes, you walk into a combination of factors that just make you miserable, and there’s nothing you can do but wait it out.
Today was one of those days.
We traveled from Utsunomiya — northeast of Tokyo — back to Kawasaki, on the city’s far southwest side.
Check-in was late, at 4 p.m.
We’d gotten lucky with early check-ins before. We’d arrived several hours earlier than the official 5pm check-in time at our last guesthouse in Utsunomiya.
And at the place that we’d stayed the 4 nights before that, we used to sit and work in the common area during most of the daytime and saw cleaners arriving every morning like clockwork, right after the 10am checkout time. They’d promptly fix up empty rooms for the next guests well ahead of time. We obviously weren’t aware this would be the case and had chosen to spend a couple hours studying at a train station before arriving at check-in time, but after seeing how things worked there, I’m sure that even if we’d shown up unannounced before time, we’d have had no problem checking in.
I admit these experiences spoiled us a little bit, and in this overconfidence we had planned to reach our next hotel ahead of times, confident we’d be allowed to drop our bags at least. It was a blessing that we’d ran late leaving Utsunomiya and ended up arriving at exactly 4:15pm.
The lock code clicked open, we pushed the door and were greeted by… bin bags. Full of trash. Blocking the entrance.
Not an abomination, but by the standards we’d grown accustomed to during our time in Japan so far, it felt like one. A cleaning lady spotted us and in a frenzy, made an X with her arms, muttered chotto matte a few times, and disappeared upstairs.
We lingered at the doorway, uncertain. A few minutes passed though, and she was still nowhere to be seen. We’d been told not to enter and even if we’d wanted to, we weren’t quite strong enough to throw our suitcases over the trash bags. To kill time, we wandered off to a nearby 7-Eleven, bitterly hauling our luggage along after a tiring day of travel.
Thankfully, the trash was gone by the time we returned. We navigated the self check-in system and I took a couple of trips up and down to bring both our suitcases up the flight of stairs.
The room itself was exactly as advertised — an 8m² space with a bunk bed, a fridge (unexpectedly), and just enough floor space to stand. But the walls were grimy. The shared sink at the end of the corridor was clogged. The microwave housed a layer of dust so thick it could tell stories. The toilet cubicle was so tight my knees touched the door when I sat down. I checked the floor map for a common area — something, anything bigger than a bunk bed — but there was none.
I’m not usually one to pick up on these details. I register general vibes — good, bad, stinky — but when I share these sorts of particulars, it’s usually a repetition of something I’ve heard from my mom or someone else who pays more attention.
All in all, it was disappointing but, as usual, liveable. Coming from the places we lived over the past week, though, this new place felt horrible initially.
Our feelings towards it elevated slightly as the night went on, and in my head I’m sure we’ll be indifferent by the time we check out in 4 nights’ time, but with our ever-fluctuating standards, our moods have been on a rollercoaster, too.
When the rest of the family was here at the start of the trip, mom and I were clearly the least fussy people of the lot. I’m obviously not the most qualified person to say this about myself, but mom definitely was, and I really believe I make do with a lot of things.
So even though I’m not religious, I channeled the serenity prayer and accepted this as our new temporary shelter.
We adapted. Like always.
Mom took the bottom bunk as usual, since it’s easier for me to climb to the top. Plus, she moves around between the room and the kitchen a lot more often than I do, so being on the top gave me more privacy.
But the dim bedside lights were as useless on as they were off. The tiny desk was already full due to the lack of alternate storage space. We needed a place to study, and creaky bunk beds weren’t an option unless we wanted to go blind on the bottom or risk a structural collapse on the top.
The libraries in the area had all closed by 7 p.m. so, thanks to its free wifi and good seating, McDonald's it was.
McDonald’s has different connotations in different countries, and in Japan it’s perfectly normal to see people sitting alone, working on their laptops for hours here. Half the seats have charging ports too, so it seems they’re encouraging this. It’s basically like Starbucks in London.
The one we found was open 24 hours, so we sat there until 11:30 p.m., catching the second-to-last train home — not quite daring to test fate by waiting for the last.
And just like that, our spirits lifted. We found our rhythm: library by day, McDonald's by night, studying our way to the JLPT. Tourist plans could wait until after the exam.
The tiny room we dreaded at first would become just another temporary vessel.
The existence of a stovetop, of all things, completely made up for the rest of the shortcomings in my mom’s eyes, and she excitedly soaked lentils in preparation to make daal chawal the next morning.
It is another clause of the serenity prayer to have the courage to change the things you can, and while we’re making do with the hotel we’re at now, we couldn’t risk ending up at a place like this when dad and Bua are here too. Grudgingly and tired, I sat down to tackle the necessary evil: bookings.
A nightmarish process of back-and-forth messages, keeping everyone’s preferences in mind, comparing locations and budgets and balancing comfort against cost ensued. It kept me up until 4am.
I’d initially looked into a more nomadic, hobo-style series of stays, but after hours of stress, we finally settled on a single house for when dad and Bua arrived — a slightly more expensive option, but given their more laid-back preferences compared to mama’s and mom’s and mine it was the right choice.
For now, we had one last guesthouse stay booked before that, a return to Odawara—Tokyo was far too expensive over the weekend, and just the two of us were willing to stretch our limits one last time. But knowing that after this, we’d have a long stretch in one place, a home base, was comforting.
And even if it wasn’t quite what we expected, at least it would be steady.
We would flow.