If you’re travelling on a budget, you often have to share a room. By the time I visited Japan in 2016, I had stayed in my fair share of six- and eight-share dorm rooms. I once even shared a room with 31 other backpackers 😱
Sharing a room had always been fine. Until Japan.
I had decided the full-on hostel thing was no longer for me. I was nearly 31, after all, and had been living alone for quite some time. Japan is expensive so, to keep the costs relatively low, I signed up to share a room with just one other girl. That girl turned out to be a lady in her sixties, which was cool with me – I get on well with all kinds of people.
In our first ever conversation she assured me that she was a great roommate and definitely didn’t snore. Great!
She lied.
In each town we stayed in a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn). The floors were covered with tatami mats made of straw and, rather than a bed, we slept on futons on the floor. Futons are surprisingly comfy so it would have been all good, had it not been for Snorey Lady.
You see, when someone snores at a high volume, they create rather a lot of vibration. I think raised beds must absorb this to some extent. However, when sleeping on the floor, the vibration travels effortlessly from the Snorey Lady right over to their sleep-deprived neighbour. Earplugs are useless because you can feel the snoring!
I hadn’t slept for a week and had survived the days on iced coffee (thank heaven Japan has a vending machine on every corner!). With a week to go, I began to seek other sleeping arrangements. Dragging my futon to the corridor outside, I settled myself down and shut my eyes.
I kid you not, the floor in the corridor was vibrating too. Moving further along the corridor, I could still hear the rhythmic chainsaw.
I finally found peace that night on the sofa in the hotel lobby, and repeated that experience for the next few nights in different hotels. It wasn’t perfect – I had to peel my face off of one too many faux leather sofas – but I was doing ok.
Then I arrived in a new hotel. Whilst waiting in reception to check in (and taking note of the particularly squooshy new sofa, on which I planned to catch some Z’s that night), I suddenly burst into tears. I had seen a sign.
“Please don’t sleep on couch.”
