Tokyo, Sep 14 (IANS) A hotel in Japan turns down young couples who come looking for a place to stay. This hotel has only 'cold-storage' rooms -- that too for the dead!
Situated in Yokohama, the Lastel hotel though looks much like any other lodging, it stores the deceased in refrigerated coffins so that mourning relatives can visit any time, the Daily Mail reported.
These are, however, not permanent hotel guests. They are waiting their turn at the city's crowded crematoriums.
There are 18 corpses, all tucked up in refrigerated coffins. Each coffin costs around 12,000 yen ($157).
Hotel owner Hisayoshi Teramura says about the couples who come asking for rooms: 'We tell them we only have cold rooms.'
Death in Japan has become a 'rare booming market', the daily said.
In 2010, according to government records, 1.2 million people died. Around 55,000 more people died than in 2009.
Over the past decade, an average of 23,000 more people died each year in Japan.
Annual deaths by 2040 are expected to reach 1.66 million.
Teramura's hotel for the dead stores and chills encoffined corpses, and delivers them through hatches into a viewing room, whenever friends and family come to pay their respects.
In Yokohama city, the average wait for a crematorium is more than four days.
'Otherwise people have to keep the bodies at home where there isn't much space,' said Teramura.
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