Reuters
updated 9/12/2011 4:38:55 PM ET
TOKYO — Across from a noodle shop in a Yokohama suburb, Hisayoshi Teramura's inn looks much like any other small lodging that dots the port city. Occasionally, it's even mistaken for a love hotel by couples hankering for some time beneath the sheets.
But Teramura's place is neither a love nest nor a pit stop for tired travelers. The white and grey tiled building is a corpse hotel, its 18 deceased guests tucked up in refrigerated coffins.
"We tell them we only have cold rooms," Teramura quips when asked how his staff respond to unwary lovers looking for a room.
The daily rate at Lastel, as it is known, is 12,000 yen ($157). For that fee, bereaved families can check in their dead while they wait their turn in the queue for one of the city's overworked crematoriums.
Growing market
Death is a rare booming market in stagnant Japan and Teramura's new venture is just one example of how businessmen are trying to tap it.
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