Saturday, March 25, 2017
The Main Attraction hr589
On the first day of my latest trip, I checked in the hotel after I left
the shopping mall. The room had a big window looking out on Tokyo Bay. A
night view of the jet-black sea and glittering skyscrapers of stylish
condominiums was spread on it. Onto the gorgeous glass table, I laid out
packs of deli foods that had a sticker telling ‘Half Price’ on each lid
that I’d gotten at the grocery store in the mall. My chief delight of a
trip is to enjoy drinking in a hotel room. I usually get food outside
the hotel and bring a small plastic bottle that I refill with cheap
brandy beforehand at home. Compared to the room service, the cost is
digits lower in this way although the place to have it is the same. It
feels like I order room service of a space as an elegant cocktail lounge
by staying at a hotel instead of drinks and foods. Since I bring cheap
liquor and snacks, I can enjoy drinking in a quiet, luxurious setting
without worries of the bill or the closing time, which is somehow my
main purpose of a trip. I was nibbling on half-off seafood looking out
the view that I couldn’t possibly see out of my apartment window and
wished this moment would last forever. Although I had feared the hotel
might be crammed with Chinese tourists because of the Lunar New Year, it
wasn’t the case here and I didn’t see many of them. But as the way the
world goes, hotels are never quiet enough to sleep in well. I woke up
next morning by noises from neighboring rooms without sleeping tight.
Quite a few hotels stand together in this area and I walked to the
different hotel for lunch. A restaurant in that hotel has a lunch buffet
that is reasonably priced and served in a chic atmosphere. About 95
percent of the customers are women and the place is always full. I had
no trouble to get a table though, as I had made an online reservation
that gave me a discount. I enjoyed as much roasted beef and dessert as I
wanted that was too expensive to have in my daily life. Then I moved to
a nearby outlet mall. Because my apartment is about to be burst with
cheap clothes already, I just strolled around as a window shopper. But
when I found a bracelet at $5 that was marked down from $30, I couldn’t
help jumping at it. I was staying at the same hotel that night, which
meant my favorite drinking time would come again. I got a plastic bottle
of wine at $4 and, as I was still more than full from the lunch buffet,
some salad and light snacks for dinner at a convenience store and
walked back to the hotel. Before going back to my room, I had an
important thing to do – using the hotel’s premium member lounge as a
nonmember, again. I repeated the extravaganza of the previous day there,
having expensive coffee and tea for free as much as I liked. I didn’t
know why free drinks tasted especially good, but I knew for sure that I
was the one who made the most of the free use of the lounge as this
hotel’s off-season promotion. It was early evening and there was still
time until I opened my cost efficient bar by myself in my room. So I
went to the fitness club of this hotel for the first time. The club
requires an outrageously expensive membership fee and normally I just do
nothing but ignoring its existence. Only, this off-season promotion
stay came with preferential treatment at no extra cost that included the
free use of the club. I was curious what an astronomically expensive
fitness club looked like. As I walked through a glass corridor leading
up to the club, I saw the whole new world unfold before my eyes. I had
cherished drinking in a hotel room as the main attraction of a trip for
years till then. Yet the experience I was about to have in this fitness
club overturned and changed everything so easily…
Labels:
attraction,
buffet,
Chiba,
discount,
fitness club,
free,
half price,
hotel,
Japan,
liquor,
lounge,
lunch,
restaurant,
roasted beef,
room service,
shopping mall,
Tokyo Bay,
travel,
trip