Business hotels in Japan are inexpensive shelters for the traveling salesman or the engineer in the field. That is the cliché, but in fact one sees many cost-conscious vacationers in the "business hotels". Several hotel chains in Japan are competing for this The “business hotels” are widespread and well used.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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The furnishings in the hotels are simple and functional. The rooms are small, often very small, but clean. The windows can only be opened a crack, if at all, and often not at all. The air conditioning system provides fresh air. This is considered normal.

In the densely built-up cities, it is not uncommon for one to look out of the windows of the “business hotels” only at the walls of the house and not see a piece of sky. Sometimes you can't even look out because privacy films are blocking your view. The reason for this may be that the neighboring house and its windows are too close. Most hotel rooms have a bathroom with a plastic bathtub and washbasin, which is supplied and installed as a single piece. These bathing cabins en bloc were first developed in Japan in the run-up to the Olympic Games in 1964, in order to be able to cope with the construction boom of that time in good time before the Games.

This Olympic throwback offers little consolation to the athletes or other participants in the current Tokyo Olympic Games if they have to be quarantined after a positive corona test.

Loud complaints can be heard from the quarantine rooms.

The German professional cyclist Simon Geschke spoke of "half psychiatry and half prison", although he later withdrew the reference to psychiatry after criticism.

The Dutch skateboarder Candy Jacobs called the conditions in a video from the quarantine "inhuman".

The association “Athleten Deutschland” complains from a distance about “prison-like conditions”.

Gifts on the way back to Germany

The complaints and complaints are directed towards the closed windows and the lack of fresh air from outside, the one-sided diet and the lack of exercise opportunities. Geschke also complained that you had to measure your fever and oxygen levels in your blood as early as 7:00 a.m.

The athletes are no different from the Japanese and foreigners from dozens of countries who regularly enter Japan and who have to be quarantined in business hotels for up to ten days. Sometimes the athletes are even better off. Geschke reported in interviews that he was allowed to pick up his food in the lobby three times a day and would meet coaches and other athletes and supervisors there. Regular travelers only see a person in their hotel quarantine on the few days on which a saliva sample is collected for the PCR test. The food is hung on the outside of the door for them. The regular arrivals are only suspected of being virus carriers, while the quarantined athletes have tested positive for Covid. There is little criticism in Japan of the quarantine rules, which also affect incoming Japanese.

Geschke will fly back to Germany this Sunday after a second PCR test to lift the quarantine turned out negative.

The Japanese authorities had formally shortened the quarantine for the cyclist, initially announced to be 14 days, by four days, explained Bernd Wolfarth, the chief Olympic doctor of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, to the FAZ Vaccination status and the low viral load of Geschkes could have helped, ”said Wolfarth.

The right to 15 minutes of fresh air

The Olympic doctor reported that the Japanese "tried very hard" to give the option of providing gifts with sports equipment and supplementary nutrition when the Germans asked directly. “That was excellent,” said Wolfarth. Attempts have also been made to optimize the hotel's offer according to Geschke's specifications. Geschke had received training equipment in order to be able to keep fit. The Olympic Games Organizing Committee said on Saturday that the authorities had made improvements for quarantined athletes. Six Dutch athletes had previously fought for the right to 15 minutes of fresh air a day with a sit-in strike.

The row over quarantine conditions reflects how cultural differences clash around the Olympic Games. When many Japanese accept fresh air from the air conditioning, while many European visitors want open windows. While many Japanese people attach little importance to the view from the hotel window, many Westerners do. The "business hotels" are a special form of the hotel industry, a simple counterpart to the luxury hotels or country inns that can be seen in brochures about Japan as a holiday destination. In Japan, however, it is not considered inhuman to stay in these hotels. The Olympic participants had been announced in the “playbook” about the corona protection rules that they would be quarantined in a “business hotel” in the event of an infection.But what exactly a "business hotel" is in Japan can only be known by travelers to Japan with experience.