In Japan, a society where many young adults live with their families and generations share a small space with thin walls, love hotels seem like a logical extension of life. A quiet place where you can slip away for a few hours to satisfy your basic human needs. They run the gamut from grim and minimalistic rooms by the hour to elaborate love dens, and the prices vary accordingly as well.

While I have never stayed in a love hotel, I am intrigued by the concept. A love hotel is a simple and honest thing which does not hide behind a facade. You come to a love hotel to have sex. You pick out a room you like, you pay for it, a key is slipped across the counter, and you go get it on. When you’re done, the sheets are changed and the room is tidied up for the next customer.

We have many skewed perceptions about the sexuality of other nations. Japan, especially, seems to confuse the Western mind because from Japan comes tentacle porn, but also the tea ceremony. Shibari, and cherry blossam festivals. Japanese erotic art is some of the most intriguing, stimulating, and…interesting in the world.

Misty Keasler has a photo set up at Photographs Do Not Bend which consists entirely of shots of love hotels. The technical skills demonstrated in the set are impressive: the composition and lighting of the images is impeccable. But in addition, the photographs have a strange poignancy about them. They are glimpse into another, magical world, much like love hotels themselves.

I particularly like the traditionally styled Japanese room with sliding doors and tatami mats that is obviously fitted out for bondage. Another bondage room features a giant red and black bed along with traditional Japanese erotic woodcuts on the walls. A number of the rooms artfully integrate a St. Andrews cross—I think I might need to acquire one. I think it would accent the hall beautifully.

[love hotels]

Today Puff and I went on a gardening extravaganza. She didn’t really sleep last night either, and when we woke up, it was decided that the back yard should be tackled. The back yard has been kind of a sore point with us—it was filled with overgrown weeds and lumber when we moved in, and the leasing agency kept promising that it would be fixed…but it wasn’t.

So we got proactive, put on pants, and hurled the lumber over the fence for someone else to deal with. This is my general course of action with a lot of things in life right now, so why not backyard lumber?

Then, I coaxed Cap’n Boysenberry into taking us to Home Depot for plants and planters. Cap’n Raspberry came along as well, although the two of them stayed in the car while we wandered around the garden section. So now I’ve done the heterosexual hipster couple wandering around Home Depot talking about plants thing, and the ambitious lesbian gardening couple wandering around Home Depot talking about plants thing. The staff must assume I’m poly.

We ended up spending around $120, getting six ten inch terracotta pots and four twelve inchers. We used three of the big ones to plant climbing vines: jasmine, passion flower, and something with cool pink flowers. We lined those suckers up against the back fence, staked them, and hoped for the best. I suppose we will need to repot them at some point if we want them to get really big, but I think for now things will go well. We planted lavender in the third pot and put it under the window.

In the small pots, we put an assortment of colorful flowers. We staged them artfully around the back yard, and it looks so much better back there already. The grass is still weedy as all get out, but the plants make it a much nicer place to be. It is my sincere hope that all of them thrive, which means I probably shouldn’t touch them too much. I am hoping that by summer time, the vines will be climbing well and everything else will be in good shape too.

Our next garden adventure, of course, is taming the grass.

Where does the guerrilla part come in, you ask? Let’s just say that our potting soil did not come from Home Depot, and leave it at that.

[gardening]

Since I couldn’t sleep, I thought I would browse through the New York Times Sunday Magazine online, which is normally something I do a little later in the day on Sundays. But I was awake, and I didn’t want to miss more scintillating advice from The Ethicist (who apparently thinks it is ok to print incredibly racist letters comparing African Americans to midgets).

I also noticed a brief about the work of Taryn Simon. The slide show is worth checking out, because she travels to some interesting places and got access to things most of us normally never see. The photographs are stark, compelling, and interesting.

If you have ever wondered what a customs confiscation room looks like, or how the Federal government farms marijuana…now you can know.

I would love to see her out on the Island. I am beginning to think that there is an urgent need for documentation of abandoned military bases, before they decay entirely and slip out of sight and memory.