Tucked away within the mountains of the Nagano Prefecture city of Takayama, Matsukawakan appears to be like like a really good place to spend an evening or two. The ryokan (Japanese inn) boasts conventional tatami room interiors, personal sauna and open-air tub services, lovely pure environment, and meals utilizing domestically caught wild recreation.
Matsukawakan is about 45 minutes east of Nagano Station by automobile, and being a bit off the usual vacationer route signifies that up till now all of their company have been home vacationers. However, final week the inn welcomed its very first company from abroad, with members of the employees brushing up on their English so as to cordially greet them once they arrived.
However, the employees by no means bought to say goodbye, as a result of the vacationers seem to have all of a sudden left with out going by means of the checkout process, and in addition with out paying for his or her room.
Matsukawakan posted concerning the incident on its official Twitter account on Tuesday, together with pictures of cops they’d known as to the lodge to debate the scenario and sharing a display shot of a textual content message despatched by the worker who first seen that the overseas vacationers had disappeared. The two foreigners had checked in on Friday, August 2, with a reservation to remain for 2 nights. The pair went out on Saturday morning, however once they hadn’t returned to the inn by late that night time, the worker turned involved and went to examine their room, discovering that they’d taken all of their baggage with them once they left the inn.
“Please help us…,” says Matsukawakan’s tweet. “Our foreign country guests, who’d made a reservation for multiple nights, left without paying. The police have looked into the matter for us, but there isn’t any sign of being able to locate them. Our entire staff was looking forward to having people from overseas see what a wonderful place Takayama is, and we feel so betrayed and sad. We wish they would have shown even the bare minimum of courtesy…”
Though not specified within the tweet, given the agricultural location of the inn, it’s doubtless that the company had booked a bundle that included not solely their room however meals too, making this a case of double injury to the lodge financially.
The rural location may additionally have one questioning if maybe the pair of vacationers by no means returned as a result of they met with some unlucky accident within the close by mountains or forests. The proven fact that they left none of their belongings behind, nonetheless, suggests in any other case. It’s not clear precisely what sort of baggage they checked in with, however even when they had been carrying solely backpacks which they had been planning to make use of whereas out and about on Saturday, logically they’d have left no matter contents they weren’t going to wish throughout their day-excursion again on the room in the event that they’d had any intention of going again, staying the second night time, and paying their invoice.
The similar inexperience with abroad vacationers that had the inn so enthusiastic about their overseas company appears to have additionally contributed to them overlooking a easy method this drawback might, and will, have been prevented, or a minimum of made it simpler to trace the vanished pair down. As identified by a commenter, lodges in Japan are required by legislation to photocopy the passports of abroad vacationers (and even overseas residents of Japan are required to current and have their resident card photocopied, which incorporates their identify, picture, and handle).
▼ The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare web site has explanations of the process in a number of languages, in order that even lodges with out multilingual employees on the entrance desk can talk the requirement to company from abroad.
Apparently Matsukawakan was unaware of this requirement, and in addition, in contrast to many different lodges in Japan, doesn’t require pre-payment on the time of check-in. Still, assuming that a minimum of one of many two vacationers was required to offer their identify when making the reservation, and that stated identify wasn’t a false one, it looks like investigators coordinating with immigration authorities ought to flip up a minimum of one potential lead.
With Japan’s inbound tourism increase persevering with, it’s doubtless that these received’t be the final overseas vacationers to e-book an evening at Matsukawakan, and hopefully the subsequent ones can be extra scrupulous.
Sources: Twitter/@matsukawakan, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
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