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The story
A hot spring facility that had lifted its tattoo ban — charging tattooed customers an extra 100 yen to bathe — reportedly reversed the policy just one month after starting it, sparking discussion on 5ch’s Newssoku VIP board. Trouble reportedly included damaged facilities and customers smoking without permission, and the thread split sharply between those who argued “just ban the individual customers who caused trouble” and those sympathetic to the facility, arguing “there’s no way 100 yen covers the cost of hiring someone to monitor them.” Opinions also diverged over whether the 100-yen surcharge was set at a reasonable level, and whether it’s fair to lump yakuza in with people who just have fashion tattoos.
What people said
They're charging an extra 100 yen, so just use that revenue to hire a monitor.
In your fantasy world, are enough tattooed customers paying that 100 yen to actually cover a monitor's monthly salary…?
It's the Reiwa era already.
Private businesses are allowed to discriminate.
Yakuza isn't an occupation.
Why does it turn into collective punishment?
Handling things case-by-case just adds to the staff's workload.
If you don't sign, you don't get the wristband, right?
LMAO
LMAO…
100 tattooed customers a day? What is this, Kabukicho?" (Kabukicho — Tokyo's notorious red-light/entertainment district)
Enough happened in just one month that they must have been coming in droves.
Okay, let's say hypothetically 3,000 tattooed customers came in a month lol
100 yen × 3,000 people = 300,000 yen
Let's put the monitor's salary at around 200,000 yen?
So the facility probably doesn't want to take on the risk of trouble just to net 100,000 yen a month lol
If they're charging money for it, they should actually follow through properly.
If they weren't charging, fine, whatever.
If 100 yen isn't enough, just charge 200 yen.
It's not like it has to be exactly 100.
It says most of them bathed quietly and behaved themselves.
If it says most of them behaved, that means they know exactly who caused the trouble — so just ban that person.
This guy can solve the whole case single-handedly… lol
Seriously, there's no point in the shop even doing this.
They're charging an extra 100 yen for it, so there is a point.
That 100 yen just gets eaten up by the hassle of dealing with it.
Forget the hassle cost — regular customers fleeing is the real lost business." (パンピー — slang for "ordinary/normie" folks)
In that case, wouldn't it have been better to charge an extra 500 yen?
That'll just bring in guys going "I paid an extra 500 yen, so quit sweating the small stuff!"
Charge more and the crowd's behavior improves too, plus there's more money to spend on handling things properly — wouldn't that work out?
The truly badly-behaved ones probably ignore both the fee and the sign-up sheet anyway.
A membership system is the only way to actually screen them out.
Background and points of debate
Japan’s widespread “no tattoos” rule at public bathhouses is generally traced back to the 2000s, when anti-organized-crime ordinances spread and treating tattoos as a marker of gang affiliation became standard practice. In recent years, partly driven by a rise in foreign tourists, some facilities have started easing the rule — allowing cover-up stickers or restricting tattooed guests to private baths — and this hot spring appears to have been one of those testing a wider opening, in this case via a surcharge. The thread split between the view that facilities should simply eject individual troublemakers, and the view that, given limited staff, handling things case-by-case isn’t cost-effective — with the adequacy of the 100-yen surcharge itself also up for debate. It’s worth noting, though, that how many tattooed customers actually visited and what exactly happened remains secondhand information circulating within the thread; no official explanation from the facility has been presented.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Newssoku VIP) thread “[Sad News] Onsen That Lifted Its Tattoo Ban Gives Up After Just One Month wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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