This is the off season for the b&b. Although the peninsula is no doubt beautiful at any time of year, right now night falls by 4:45 pm (I googled it and the results indicated that Japan only observes DST "sometimes") and it's much too cold to even dip your toes in the water - that is at the few beaches where the waves are mild enough that it's safe to. Below is a summary of the people who have come to stay during my tenure and my impressions (read: judgements) of them.
The first real challenge was the overnight stay of a children's baseball team with coaches and parents in tow. V was still here, so both of us donned awkwardly large black chef coats, brown aprons and matching newsboy caps, as well as plastic nametags bearing the names of our countries of origin and helped serve dinner. (The nametags were to prevent the guests from trying to engage us in conversation. V, being Spanish, was an obvious foreigner; I am not). The meal was a long and drawn-out affair, full of kids running and yelling in the hallway and the coach's feeble attempts to make them be quiet. Thankfully everyone was quieter the following morning at 6:30 am breakfast.
When we cleaned out the adults' rooms after the group's departure, I had a sudden flashback to the mornings after parties I'd thrown in my room in college - cups, scattered and half-empty, and beer cans that everyone had been too lazy (or drunk) to consolidate into a trash bag. No matter, if those had been my kids I would have been drinking a lot too.
Next came a group of university students who, we were told, had come here to party. We cleared the largest tatami room for their use, but with all its austerity it seemed, to me, the last place I'd want to let loose and potentially make a mess. Whatever shananigans they may have gotten up to, however, they were much neater than the adults in the last group, neatly bagging up all their trash before they left.
The weekend of a local marathon, a rather unhealthy-looking group of young people stayed for one night. One of the guys had an unfortunate condition that left his sheets and corner of the room covered in flakes of skin that, from afar, looked like crumbs. I shook off what I could outside, and hoped that the lint catcher inside the washing machine would take care of the rest.
For the most part, though, guests at this time of year are lone travelers, truck drivers, or maintenance workers assigned to the area. All men, of course, whose pungent, left-behind odors after only one or two-night stays never cease to amaze me. (If they're smokers, it's even worse). After checkout we leave the windows open for a day or so, willing God to return the room to state of olfactory neutrality.
There's also the occasional Single White Male, which under the circumstances I put in a separate category. I always hope that they're not here to find a Japanese girlfriend/wife but, you know, yellow fever is as yellow fever does.