I noticed the Hotel Arisu while using Google maps to search for another abandoned love hotel which was said to be in the area. I visited in April 2014, but didn't get many good photographs, mainly because I was using my brand-new Nikon D800, which I had only received the previous day, and wasn't familiar with the controls. I returned a few weeks later to finish the job.
I think the establishment was supposed to be called the Hotel Alice, but I only saw the name written in katakana so I can't be sure.
Like many rural love hotels, the Arisu was more like a motel than a hotel. The guest rooms were housed in several single storey buildings built around a central courtyard, each with covered parking spaces in front. The office and proprietor's quarters were in a separate two storey structure, which was decorated with parapets to vaguely resemble a castle.
The car park had been used to dispose of various unwanted things, including a few piles of dirt and broken tarmac.
The furniture and personal effects had been removed from the office and the rooms upstairs. It had been quite badly vandalised, with holes knocked in the walls.
The guest rooms were unlocked; some had once been locked, but someone had cut holes in the doors to open them. The furniture had apparently been removed from the rooms before the place was abandoned, but a few smaller items were scattered around. Some rooms were traditional Japanese, and others were "western" style, with varying degrees of gaudiness.
The rooms were still mostly watertight and in decent condition, but someone had smashed a lot of the internal bathroom windows. A lot of the metal fittings such as taps had been stolen, presumably for their scrap value.
Notices in some of the rooms informed customers that the Hotel Arisu would close on Thursday, November 15, but they could use their point cards at the affiliated Hotel Maribu. It didn't state the year, but the only recent years in which November 15 was a Thursday were 1990, 2001, 2007, and 2012. We can immediately exclude 2012, because I found a photograph of the place in ruins which was put online in 2011. It looked far too good for a place that's been abandoned since 1990, so it must have been either 2001 or 2007. I would guess 2007.
