A photo of a room at the “Sanwa Hotel” in Shinkaichi, Hyogo Ward, Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, sparked a thread on 5ch. The bare-bones lodging house offers a room of roughly one tatami mat in size, furnished with nothing but a futon and a small TV stand, starting from just ¥1,100 a night. The thread saw a flurry of reactions weighing cheapness against livability — mentions that Nishinari’s flophouses start from ¥500, price comparisons with internet cafés, and worries about bugs and smells. Some users even wondered aloud whether the photo was AI-generated, splitting opinion.
What people said
1AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:12
Cheap
2AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:13
Sounds like Nishinari, but it's actually Shinkaichi
4AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:15
Laying out cardboard in a park would be more hygienic lol
5AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:17
Sanwa Hotel, 5-2-11 Shinkaichi, Hyogo Ward, Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture
6AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:18
It's known as an ultra-cheap doya (a flophouse-style lodging house) with rooms of about one tatami mat, furnished with just a futon and a small TV stand, starting from roughly ¥1,100 a night
11AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:20
Surely this has to be AI-generated?
At the very least they'd change the pillowcase
12AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:20
Brutal
That's a 'pay me ¥20,000 and I'll consider it' level of rough
And of course you'd be sleeping standing up
15AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:22
Sleeping at a karaoke box or manga café sounds better
17AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:22
The place I stayed at in Kobe looked just like this, for ¥1,800
The guy at the front desk was out cold and wouldn't wake up for ages
Obviously there's no bath, so you've got no choice but to go to a nearby public bathhouse
You've got to keep your wallet in your pants pocket at all times, or it might get stolen
18AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:24
It's a CRT TV, but
I wonder if there are even any channels it can pick up
23AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:26
Who even needs a TV there lol
28AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:30
Re: #23
Disposal costs money, so they probably just left it sitting there
24AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:26
Ijuin (Hikaru Ijuin, a well-known Japanese radio host/comedian) often stays at ¥2,000-ish places like this when he goes to Okinawa, right?
25AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:27
Even for a cheap lodging house, you rarely see a futon this stained
27AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:29
I've heard Nishinari's flophouses go for ¥500 a night
More like everyone crashing together in one big shared room
The only comfort is that it keeps the rain and wind off you
29AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:31
Better to just park a car in a lot and sleep in it
Probably around ¥1,000
30AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:31
If it's just to keep the rain and wind off, you don't even need a futon
Bring your own sleeping bag and you could manage
31AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:33
It says 2024 on that Jump magazine
So is this photo actually two years old
Or did they just leave an old magazine lying around
43AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:47
Re: #31
That's the February 2024 issue of Monthly Magazine
and issue 6 of Weekly Shonen Champion
59AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:08
Re: #31
So that also rules out this being a photo from 15+ years ago, back when TVs were still analog
34AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:36
Maybe you could manage if you wrapped yourself in a picnic sheet. Though the smell sounds brutal too
35AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:37
Isn't this the kind of place where you can rent a room for like ¥30,000 a month?
39AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:40
Re: #35
If you're paying that much, there are plenty of better places out there
37AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:38
Back in the day there was a dirt-cheap 3-tatami-mat room near Kyoto Station lol lol lol lol lol
40AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:43
It's apparently not really taken by casual guests
Mostly elderly people with nowhere else to go end up living there long-term
42AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:46
A ¥2,000-something lodging house in Nishinari sounds really decent by comparison now
Even I, who can sleep on cardboard on the street, might not be able to handle this
45AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:50
Your own bed probably looks pretty much the same, doesn't it
47AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:53
Re: #45
Those stains aren't even ones you made yourself though (referring to the photo in Re: #1)
46AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:52
Filthy as hell
The futon and pillow look like they haven't been washed in years lol
50AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:58
Cigarette smoke and who-knows-what-else soaked into everything — that's gotta be rough
Sleeping under the night sky honestly sounds way more comfortable
52AnonymousOct 4, 2026 09:59
The copy-paste troll (a notorious poster known for spamming the same text across threads) showing up here…
Does that mean they've actually stayed at this hotel?
53AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:00
The copy-paste troll has been staying here for 10 years
56AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:05
I've stayed at an old-school doya in Minamisenju maybe twice, but the price is about the same as a locked private booth at Kaikatsu Club (a 24-hour internet café chain), so there's no real upside
57AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:05
According to reviews from people who've actually stayed there, the smell is apparently the worst part
58AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:07
At 3am this morning
got bitten by mites that had gotten behind my sleep-tracking watch and couldn't get deep sleep
Just one bite is enough to snap you out of a sleeping pill's effects
60AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:10
If it's just to rest your body, an internet café would probably do just fine, but these days you need to show ID there, so this place is probably used by people who can't use those
61AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:12
I've never stayed at an internet café — how much is it for a night?
63AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:13
Probably a godsend of a lodging for fugitives on the run
65AnonymousOct 4, 2026 10:14
Re: #63
There was a wanted poster put up there
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Simple lodging houses (commonly called “doya”) are a style of accommodation concentrated in old laborer districts like Shinkaichi and Nishinari, originally developed as cheap lodging for day laborers. Today they also serve as a safety net for low-income people and those without stable housing, and the thread’s observation that “internet cafés now require ID, so people who can’t use those end up here” reflects that background. Within the thread there was also discussion scrutinizing the photo’s authenticity and timing (based on the magazine issue dates, the TV model, etc.), but the only verifiable details are the Sanwa Hotel address and the ¥1,100 price given by the original poster — whether it’s actually “the cheapest hotel in Japan,” as the thread title claims, was never confirmed. Reactions largely centered on weighing the rock-bottom price against concerns over hygiene and safety, with differing views on just how viable an option a place like this really is.
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