My Guest House (aka Gaijin House) experience.
I first came to Japan in 1995. Like most foreigners coming to Japan, I came here on a working holiday visa. My program set me up with a hotel for my first couple of nights, and some outdated information about the job market and housing possibilities. I quickly learned that the information meeting my travel agent set up for me about Japan was almost completely useless, so I had to set out on my own if I was going to get by my first summer in Japan.
I quickly got a copy of the Tokyo Classifieds (It is now the behemoth of all gaijin oriented printed media in Japan, called Metropolis) and frantically called all the guest houses in Japan. The first place I got a hold of was at Toritsu Kasei Station on the Seibu Shinjuku line. It was a very run down old house, with an ill tempered, miserable land lord that didn't even seem to like foreigners. But despite all that, I had a wonderful summer as it was my first in Japan. I meet so many people from all over the world. The next summer I came back to Japan again and stayed in the same house.
The Third summer, I returned once again, but sadly leaned that my beloved first home in Japan was turned into a parking lot. Such is the fate of many old Japanese building structures that are no longer deemed safe enough to endure the many earth quakes.
I quickly was introduced to another house. This one had a more central location near the heart of Tokyo. But yet again, it was a run down old house converted into a guest house. Honestly, it would have been harder to find a more depressing looking, run down old house in Tokyo. Some of the rooms even had no windows, and they were only the size of three tatami mats. Basically the size of a small walk in closet. I stayed in one of these room for three months. Was that ever depressing. Thankfully the laws have changed, and all living quarters in Japan must have a window.
Eventually, this building met a similar fate, and was torn down, and a shiny new mansion complex was built.
I next moved into another guest house, this one was much newer, and the location was great, but......
Yet again, it was not cleaned on a regular basis by the management, and you could count on seeing at least one cock roach a day in the summer. And the couch in the common area, well lets say you wouldn't sit on it unless your life depended on it.
Now with a young family, I am finished with the world of guest houses in Japan, but working at share style I have been introduced to a whole new level of guest houses in Japan. If I had known about these newer, cleaner and more modern guest houses 5 or 10 years ago, I surely would have preferred to stay in one of them. I guess this new breed of "designer" guest house is a recent trend, and foreigners coming to Japan for the first time should consider themselves lucky to have this option. It will be exciting to watch Share Style grow and create more and more fantastic guest houses in the future.
Visit http://www.share-style.jp/eg