00:01 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to another live stream. I'm in a typical Japanese business hotel. This is the Yonago New Urban Hotel. Let me show you the key right here. Let's have a look inside.

00:20 John Daub: All right, so some hotels have different styles. This one actually requires the key to turn on the lights, which means you can't take the key, but some of them lock the key in. So just take note of that. This is a standard Japanese business hotel room. Yeah, it's not too bad. This room costs 5,500 yen or about $48. So let's take a look at this. I would say this is kind of low range, your budget.

01:00 John Daub: You have a telephone. You probably can't call out. This is just to call within or to call the front desk. An alarm clock. There is a panel. These control all the lights. You can control the lights right from the dashboard on the pillow. This is a single, I'd say this is a double bed, maybe. You can fit two people uncomfortably. This one comes with a table. Now, not all of them are this spacious.

01:31 John Daub: You don't have to take off your shoes, by the way. I kind of usually do, but a lot of Western people won't take off their shoes. I've noticed. So if there's no place to leave your shoes, you don't have to do it, but I kind of always do that, and I leave it at the door, like here. Yeah, there you go. There's my bags. How you doing, everybody? Two hangers. This is absolutely like normal. This is exactly what you get. A place to put your luggage. A shoehorn. A flashlight. A flat screen TV. They all have it. Some of them are bigger than others.

02:02 John Daub: This one has Wi-Fi, a remote control, a hair dryer, tissues, sanitizer, notepad. This is like typical hotel stuff. This one has, I think somebody must have left this behind, but it says urban hotel, so you have a USB charger. I like that. That's a nice little touch. Inside is a hot water maker to make tea and such. They also give you some extra tea, and you can take this on the road with you. I like this. This is a nice little touch, so you can take a cup of coffee on the road with you. I haven't seen that in too many of them, but business hotels are made for business travelers, and many of them were made in the 1980s.

02:34 John Daub: You can tell this seat has seen some action. This is not the newest. There's a little bit of damage, but it's still very clean and very functional. It's just older. There's a refrigerator. It is running. I like that. That's good news. Some slippers underneath the luggage rack. Yeah. Most of these business hotels outside of Tokyo, outside of Osaka, were built in the 1980s during the bubble era, and this was because a lot of travelers were traveling more for business.

03:10 John Daub: This is an age where the capsule hotels were springing up, and not everybody wanted to stay in a capsule. People wanted to have proper hotels to stay in. This was it. The business hotel was born. This is the age when this business hotel was born, probably back in the 1960s and 70s, and they just boomed in the 80s when business boomed here. I like having this little table here. I'm going to set up my laptop and do a little bit of editing, but it's pretty standard. Usually, you don't have this table here. You'll have a desk here, so I'll set up my laptop here.

03:49 John Daub: There's usually only one outlet. This is the most inconvenient thing with Japanese business hotels. There's not enough outlets for me to charge my camera and stuff, so I usually have an extension cord with lots of other outlets to plug more stuff in. I have that in my backpack, so I'm going to be able to set that up and put that there. And usually there's an outlet near the bed, but they don't always do that. Once again, you can search the walls. You're not going to find another outlet. There's just one. And that's the biggest downside for me. I don't mind staying in business hotels. They're usually very clean and very functional.

04:29 John Daub: This one is sort of privately run. It's not a chain. That's another reason I like to support private businesses, family businesses. The bathrooms are clean. I'm telling you, it's all plastic in the Japanese style, meaning if it gets wet, it's all good. There's no problem whatsoever. This is a usual business hotel. Bathroom, sometimes a little bit smaller. Depending on the age and the amount of turnover they get, they're not renovated and they can be kind of dirty. But this one's really clean.

05:01 John Daub: You have a Japanese style toilet with a spray wash, a washlet. It's not high tech. It doesn't have the big control panels, but it's functional. This one comes with a toothbrush, razor set. There's even a body wash towel. That's pretty fancy. And if you want to take a bath, there's something that you can put in the bathtub to make it kind of fizzy and all nice and clean in there. There's shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. Usually, it comes like this. It doesn't come in little bottles. It's a community thing.

05:43 John Daub: And all the business hotels, whenever I go in there, nine times out of ten, it's a community bottle like this where everybody shares and they just refill it once a week. And I think that's a good idea. Why waste it? Little bottles. People usually take it home, right? Once again, it's a bath mat. The bathtub is clean. People use it. So that's good to see the housekeepers. I think in Japan, they know that people actually use the bathtub. Look at that. And they've even done the little fold. Very nice touch. I'm pretty happy with this.

06:13 John Daub: This isn't going to be a very long live stream. The bed, we have to try that here. Soft, comfy, springy. I like it. It's not bad at all. Not all the business hotels have free Wi-Fi, believe it or not. Sometimes, they'll still have the LAN cable connection. And I actually travel with a little Wi-Fi router. I think it cost me about $10. And you plug it into the LAN ports, and it creates a Wi-Fi signal that you can use in hotels that don't have Wi-Fi. But if they have LAN connections, you can create your own Wi-Fi inside your room.

07:07 John Daub: I have one of those things. It cost me about $10 at the electrician's house. It's nice to travel with, but it's one item more that you have to put in there. But if you're going to be staying in older Japanese business hotels, you might want to bring something like that. You can see here they have a fax copy machine. They have an ice machine. Basically, just about everything that they have and all the other morning calls they can do here. Not a lot of it is in English, though.

07:27 John Daub: We're going to see by looking through this manual together. I've had the breakfast here before a couple of days. This is the Japanese breakfast it's 870 yen or about eight dollars and it actually does look like what this picture shows you. It looks like this which is pretty amazing. And then this is the yōshoku (Western-style) this is the Western breakfast. I ordered this for tomorrow because I've had the Japanese breakfast the last two days. I was just kind of curious. It looks like an omelet with ham, a salad, pieces of toast and some apples and grapes and yogurt. That's pretty normal.

08:04 John Daub: Both of these are about eight dollars. Japanese business hotels that offer breakfast it's almost standard the price is usually this cheap about ten dollars or less. The chain hotels will charge you like twenty thirty dollars for a buffet style. Usually Japanese business hotels are like this it's reasonable price and the food is really well usually really good. The time started seven to ten but if you ask they will serve this earlier for you.

08:32 John Daub: And believe it or not this is something that I would recommend to anyone who's looking for a place to stay in the area and it's something that you should know that is an option not at every business hotel but if you ask sometimes they'll put the breakfast and make a bento (boxed lunch) for you if you say I don't have time to eat breakfast can you make a bento they'll put everything into a box and give it to you and then when you check out you can eat that later on so if you paid for the breakfast you can still eat it in a boxed lunch which is something you might want to keep in mind. Not all the hotels will do that though and they also have dinner they have a restaurant here that accommodates 40 people.

09:03 John Daub: This is the Yonago New Urban Hotel and I really like it here you know it's comfortable and pretty central. The first floor hotel you can see here here's some of the stuff that they have the restaurant steak for 2,000 yen or eighteen dollars it's pretty reasonable price. They have hire katsu teishoku (breaded pork cutlet set meal) which is a breaded pork cutlet platter with rice and soup is eight dollars for dinner that's really good. They have a unagi (eel) on rice bowl for about ten dollars and fifty cents that's pretty reasonable and they have beer this is set you get a beer and some snacks for about eight dollars and fifty cents that's a pretty good deal too.

09:52 John Daub: Let's see what else I have here they have a pot you can rent a computer they call it the happy PC set that's pretty cool and if you want they'll bring the rental computer up to your room and it looks like this it's actually a desktop I think you can get a it's a desktop so they have decent computers that you can rent. They also wrote it a little bit of English if you discover but there's not a lot of English in business hotels. Should you discover a fire keep calm and report to the manager or front so it you know there's some basic information.

10:26 John Daub: When leaving your room close the door it can prevent spreading of fire or smoke so there's you know that the important stuff if you're trapped the important stuff is in English if you're trapped call the manager or the front for help by telephone if the telephone line is dead give a sign from the window with a flashlight or a sheet to call for help and there's a flashlight right here. Cool there you go Japanese business hotels.

10:51 John Daub: I'm not all a lot of them will be in booking.com a lot of them will be available and you'll see them a whole wide range of prices. The thing is with this is that not a lot of the services are in English this is something where you can put your Google Translate to the test and see if we get kind of a little sunset here this is Yonago at night. In general business hotels are pretty convenient usually there's one available.

11:36 John Daub: The thing is most of the front desk it's family-run sometimes or if it's a chain it's usually staff that cannot speak English because 90% of the people who go to these are Japanese and they're usually very comfortable and they're very clean some of them are older but you know if you find a good one the price will be about 5,000 yen or about $45 to $60 a night. They are about this size you can see here this bed could fit one and a half people to two people small people or one and a half normal sized people or one big person.

12:20 John Daub: The bed is about 200 centimeters or two meters long so it could fit someone it's about six foot four six foot five that's not bad at all. A little hairdryer there and the remote control for the TV I never watched the TV but I like this you can have access to there's a USB port so this is a newer one they've renovated it a little bit so I hope you like this tour of a Japanese business hotel.

12:45 John Daub: And here's the remote control I can show you this really quickly I got like one minute here now this is on though this is the temperature right now it's set for 21 degrees this is up and down to raise the temperature this turns it on and off right and the rest of the stuff you don't really need to know that's pretty much basically it this one moves the fan the strength of the fan there's it this is a makes it swing left and right and there's a timer for if you wanted to cut off but basically that's about it it's set an automatic turn it on and turn the temperature and turn it off easy boom.

13:23 John Daub: Out in the hallway sometimes they'll have a laundry machine as the microwave there's a place for you to what is that air purifier the microwave we want to buy food and later a table for community there's also a on a video on demand you can buy TV cards sometimes that's an old-style and then there's a bottle of water so you get some fresh water in there. Typical business hotel, I stay in them a lot. I think that they're pretty comfortable, they're good enough for me, and you don't have to go first class all the time.

14:20 John Daub: If you wanna save some money, try it out. Just remember, you're gonna have to register, bring your passport, everything is in Japanese, so the Google Translate app will be a friend of yours. But once you have done a Japanese business hotel once, it's a standard deal, folks. They're all pretty much set the same way, and there's a reason for that. The reason is that people are comfortable when they come to a business hotel. They know what they're getting into. Once you've been in one Japanese business hotel, you've pretty much been in them all.

14:55 John Daub: So I hope that's useful for you. If you have any questions, leave in the comments below. Hit the like button if you like this kind of content, and subscribe as well, because I always appreciate it. I'll see you in the next live stream. See you next time from Tottori Prefecture. The elevator closed on me. This one only has four floors. So I like that. It's cozy. It's a word for small. Have a good night and a good day wherever you are in the world. Bye bye from Standard Business Hotel Japan.