Hostel takeover
“It was pretty packed in December,” Chuo Hotel Group
executive director Hidenori Yamada notes from the lobby of his
Hotel Chuo, a wry smile alighting his cheery, youthful face.
“There were lots of teenage girls — there was a
Johnny's [Entertainment] concert up the street — so everything
was almost completely filled up.
“Times are changing,” he continues. “Such a
thing would have been unbelievable in this area only three or
four years ago.”
The 'unbelievable' part is not, of course, the notion that frenzied
Japanese teens would descend en masse to glimpse the music label's
cache of preening, feather haired-boy band singers; but rather
that they would be coming to (and staying in) Shin-Imamiya to
do it.
Shin-Imamiya. Osaka — along with the world's other major
urban centers — is not unique insofar as the problems its
poorer residents face, in neighborhoods where they largely go
forgotten. Shin-Imamiya, and the hiyatoi ninpu; (literally “day-time
worker”) who once dominated it, has for decades existed
in varying states of penury, a situation exacerbated by the city
of Osaka's astonishingly callous attitude towards the poor. And
not without conse-quence — the price of long years of scorn
and disregard has been emptied streets, hollowed build-ings, defeated
men.
Life in the area is on the rise though, thankfully, due to an
influx of cash from that most-ready source of income: tourism.
Yamada — as director of five hotels in the area —
has incorporated his own experien-ces abroad as a backpacker in
Australia into his business objectives back home. As co-creator
of the tourism-promoting OIG — Osaka International Guesthouse
area — the 28-year-old is determined to improve things for
foreign travelers (and correspondingly, Shin-Imamiya) by building
the tourist-on-a-budget area the city now somewhat lacks.
“Unfortunately, I don't think that traveling around Japan
is as convenient for tourists as it could be,” Yamada says.
“Not just the language barrier, either. While Osaka does
a good job of catering to big groups of touri-sts, the city didn't
really know — and didn't really know what to do —
with small groups of people, like backpackers. I am a back-packer
too, so I know what kinds of difficul-ties low-budget travelers
have to deal with.”
Yamada has set his sights squarely on the backpacker subset,
offering reasonably-priced alternatives to the not-quite-so-reason-
ably-priced megahotels stations away. (At ¥2,500 a night,
one could purchase 10 one- night stays at Yamada's Hotel Chuo,
for example, for about the same price as a suite at the Nankai
Swissotel.) The rooms at his guesthouses are simple and inviting
affairs — clean, comfy bed, TV, A/C.
However, it's the laundry list of ameni-ties (including travel
guides, free internet access and, of course, coin laundry) available
that really give the places comfortable, welcoming feels; blink
and one could mistake themselves a freshman wandering a warm,
earthy college dorm. On this day,
a Japanese youth in a bathrobe makes his way across the lobby
to grab for a magazine, while a pack-laden, ruddy-faced family
of four saunters in with a serviceable konnichiwa!
“Australia was very warm and inviting — friendly
people everywhere I went,” Yamada says. “ And I wanted
to bring some of that friendliness here. I find the foreign customers,
customers from England, India, Thailand, want to talk a lot, and
are very interested in speaking with locals and finding out about
more local things.”
For his part, Yamada is wholly positive about the future —
both of Shin-Imamiya, and the tourism industry in Osaka.
“I think low-cost accommodations for backpackers will take
off, and that Shin-Imamiya will really become a backpackers' town,”
he states. “It's not finished yet, but I think in a just
a few years, this neighbor-hood will really be something.
“We have to think about the future — what this area
can be like 10 or 20 years from now,” he continues. “The
area wants to change, and we have to be ready for that."
Osaka International Guesthouse Area:
www11.ocn.ne.jp/~otomari/oig/
Hotel Chuo:
www.hotel-chuo.com
1-1-11 Taishi Nishinari Osaka • Tel: 06-6643-7355
Getting there: A two-minute's walk to
west from Dobutsuen-mae station on Subway Midosuji Line
Text: Jeff Lo • Photos: KS |
