Take A Real Holiday With Your Virtual Girlfriend

As you look out of your hotel window across the sea-side town, you smile nervously at your girlfriend.

“What do you think?” you ask, taking her hand.

Only instead of her hand you take a stylus and poke at a screen. Your girlfriend is a Love Plus+ character but your vacation with her is real.

The game allows users to pick one of three girls to be their high school girlfriend, and they must do things for her in order to maintain the relationship — basically a Tamagotchi woman.

To cash in on the mania Atami, a resort town in Japan, has transformed itself into a virtual paradise this summer. It is a destination for couples in the game, an option for when the players have earned enough boyfriend power points. Now it accommodates real life men with their hand-held devices.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

At the real Hotel Ohnoya, which opened its doors in 1937, the staff is trained to check in Love Plus+ customers as couples even if there is only one actual guest… Some devoted fans will go so far as to pay twice the rate—most hotels in Japan charge per guest not per room—to indulge the fantasy that they are not there alone. A night’s stay, at most, can cost $500 though many rooms are cheaper.

But don’t get the wrong idea. The game is strictly non-sexual. The three characters are high school students, and this promotion ends on September, when they have to get back to school.

The businesses in the area are cashing in on the phenomenon — often charging a premium to visitors to help them maintain the illusion that they are on holiday with a high school girl.

Oh crazy Japan, we giggle.

But this is a sad story. These men are crying out for human companionship.

Tatsuya Fukazawa, a 19-year-old college student, was visiting Atami for the first time on a recent weekend. In a small waist bag, he carried his Nintendo DS. Once he turned on the device, his virtual girlfriend Manaka Takane—a Libra who enjoys making pastries—greeted him in a syrupy sweet voice.

“There isn’t a lot of romance in my life and this helps me cope with some of the loneliness,” said Mr. Fukazawa with a chuckle.

Something is seriously wrong with a society in which hundreds of thousands of men are forming deeply emotional attachments to pixels. Do they prefer the game girls to real women, or do they find it is too difficult to meet someone?

As they whisper good-night to their screens in their $500 suites, surely they notice the cold on the other side of their beds. A harsh reminder that at they end of the day — they are still alone.