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it's the place where your mourning relatives can
check you in when you check out of life - a real Heartbreak Hotel.
Nestled away in suburb of Yokohama in Japan, the bizarre inn looks much
like any other of the city's small lodgings.
But this is no normal hotel, it is a hotel for the dead.
The 18 guests are all corpses, tucked up in refrigerated coffins for
12,000 yen ($157) waiting their turn for one of the city's overworked
crematoriums.
Yet unsuspecting young couples still come knocking at night, looking for
a place to stay.
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'We tell them we only have cold rooms,' owner Hisayoshi Teramura said.
Mr Teramura is cashing in on death which has become a rare booming
market in the stagnant Japan economy.
Last year, 55,000 more people died than the previous year and over the
past decade, an average of 23,000 more people have died each year in
Japan.
In 2010, according to government records, 1.2 million people passed
away, giving the country an annual death rate of 0.95 per cent compared
to the global average of 0.84 per cent.
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Annual deaths are expected to peak at 1.66 million in 2040 as the bulk
of the nation's baby boomer generation expires.
By then, Japan's population will have shrunk by around 20 million
people, an unprecedented die off for a nation neither at war or blighted
by famine.
But despite the country's economic problems the Japanese are still
splashing out on funeral ceremonies.
The Japanese still pay an average of 1.2 million yen on flowers, urns,
coffins and other funeral expenses - twice what Americans spend annually
on funerals.
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Mr Teramura, who founded cemetery developer company Nichiryoku, said:
'There's been a rush into the market.'
His hotel relies on an automated storage system hidden away from
mourners behind its flower box framed windows.
It stores and chills encoffined corpses, delivering them through hatches
and into a viewing room, day or night, whenever friends and family come
to pay their respects.
In Yokohama, the average wait for a crematorium oven is more than four
days, driving up demand for half-way morgues such as Lastel.
'Otherwise people have to keep the bodies at home where there isn't much
space,' Mr Teramura said. |