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Project Hitchhiker is the online creative outlet of Mike H.

Mike’s adventures have taken him across 3 continents, including driving a motorcycle for 6 months across Southeast Asia, hitchhiking across Canada and Japan, and walking 1000 miles along the coastline of Nova Scotia. Mike’s passions are music, travel and motorcycles (in that order). Mike’s dislikes include writing about himself in the third person. This site is a collection of his travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design.

“Come On My House!” — Love Hotels, Sexy Engrish, and Quote-Unquote “Research”

Filed Under (Accountability Lists, Japan) by projecthitchhiker on 25-12-2007

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The 6-inch pump

Adventures in Love Hotel Land

In keeping up with the accountability list I posted the other day, I decided to go in search of the “Gang Snowman” Love Hotel. This hotel is kind of underground-famous in Osaka for its Cadillac-converted spa on the roof (the headlights flash and horn honks when the car shakes…) and it’s extreme S&M themed rooms.


First step was to enlist a research assistant (who shall remain anonymous…) and then head to the love hotel district: Tanimachi 9-cho-me.


My research assistant and I came across a few strangely named love hotels, but no “Gang Snowman”…


We found this one for kinky Vegans:

Vegetarian Love Hotel


And this one that was a little slightly more appropriately named.

Aptly named


We went and checked out the pictures of the rooms, but there wasn’t anything too exciting, so we kept on.

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Sex Machine Barbeque

Filed Under (Japan) by projecthitchhiker on 20-11-2007

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Engrish cracks me up… I know it shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t enjoy laughing at other people’s stupidity. Wait, yeah, actually I should. Because it’s damn funny.


Today I saw an Osaka fashion queen girl wearing a shirt that said: Eating Brains Starts Here.


A few other gems I found:


An Advertisement for a club called…

um, yeah it does?


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Disunee Rando and the Gaijin Zoo

Filed Under (Hitchhiking, Japan, Stories) by projecthitchhiker on 10-10-2007

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Harajuku

Since I’m moving to Japan in precisely two weeks, I thought it would be appropriate to look at what I wrote about the wonderful and mysterious land of the rising prices, on my first trip way back in 2002 (reading my old writing, I get annoyed with my too-liberal use of brackets… aw crap.)


 

-To Japan-

Early morning on April 25th I drove to the airport with my Mom, Dad, and friend Skye, a student from China (originally on exchange to St. Mary’s) who would be participating in the same exchange program as me. After a bad taste of 80`s rock, typical of an unnamed Halifax radio station, the news came on: seems that scientists have discovered evidence to back up the phenomenon of “Spring Fever” — the theory that says males are more aggressive in pursuing females in the Spring season — typically thought of as an old wives tale. They said something to the effect that male hormones actually increase involuntarily in the spring season. “Good,” I thought to myself, as we pulled into the airport parking lot, “not even on the plane yet, and already I’ve got an excuse ready.”


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