Hotel Granvia Osaka: Surprise in My Room

So I check in to the Hotel Granvia in Osaka, right inside Osaka Station, for my last night in Japan. I know to expect small rooms in these places, but a hotel like this is one of the “big” room variety. A clear path wide enough for your suitcase on two sides of the bed (at the foot and one side), an actual work space, a bathroom that is not one molded piece of tub/sink/toilet. But of course it still had the crappy pillow like a bag of rice and this one added the weird foam mattress top. As I came down the hall looking for it, I could tell it was going to be landlocked, maybe one window opening into a center dead space, maybe no window at all. Ugh.

But then I open the door, and right there next to the bed (filling that already pretty narrow space) is this:

Huh? Massage chair?? Before I get too excited, I check to see if it is coin-operated or something. Nope. I plop in, grab the remote and start squinting at the little Japanese text, fearing what might happen if I press the wrong button. Eenie, meenie, Miyagi, moe. Whatever I pressed turns on a little red light on the remote and the whole chair starts to hum. I spend about the next half hour getting beat up by a Lazy Boy. What feels like steel fists rise up into my back, roll in circles, pound, and slide up and down. The hotel is way overpriced for the quality of the room, but a massage chair is a definite winner.

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