Travelers vanish half-way through their reserved stay, leave no trace (or payment) behind.

Tucked away in the mountains of the Nagano Prefecture town of Takayama, Matsukawakan looks like a very nice place to spend a night or two. The ryokan (Japanese inn), seen in the photos below, boasts traditional tatami room interiors, private sauna and open-air bath facilities, beautiful natural surroundings, and meals using locally caught wild game.

Matsukawakan is about 45 minutes east of Nagano Station by car, and being a bit off the standard tourist route means that up until now all of their guests have been domestic travelers. However, last week the inn welcomed its very first guests from overseas, with members of the staff brushing up on their English in order to cordially greet them when they arrived.

However, the staff never got to say goodbye, because the travelers appear to have suddenly left without going through the checkout procedure, and also without paying for their room.

Matsukawakan posted about the incident on its official Twitter account on Tuesday, including photos of police officers they’d called to the hotel to discuss the situation and sharing a screen shot of a text message sent by the employee who first noticed that the foreign travelers had disappeared. The two foreigners had checked in on Friday, August 2, with a reservation to stay for two nights. The pair went out on Saturday morning, but when they hadn’t returned to the inn by late that night, the employee became concerned and went to check their room, discovering that they’d taken all of their luggage with them when 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 in the tweet, given the rural location of the inn it’s likely that the guests had booked a package that included not only their room but meals too, making this a case of double damage to the hotel financially.

The rural location might also have one wondering if perhaps the pair of travelers never returned because they met with some unfortunate accident in the nearby mountains or forests. The fact that they left none of their belongings behind, however, suggests otherwise. It’s not clear exactly what kind of luggage they checked in with, but even if they were carrying only backpacks which they were planning to use while out and about on Saturday, logically they would have left whatever contents they weren’t going to need during their day-excursion back at the room if they’d had any intention of going back, staying the second night, and paying their bill.

The same inexperience with overseas travelers that had the inn so excited about their foreign guests seems to have also contributed to them overlooking a simple way this problem could, and should, have been prevented, or at least made it easier to track the vanished pair down. As pointed out by a commenter, hotels in Japan are required by law to photocopy the passports of overseas travelers (and even foreign residents of Japan are required to present and have their resident card photocopied, which includes their name, photo, and address).

▼ The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare website has explanations of the procedure in multiple languages, so that even hotels without multilingual staff at the front desk can communicate the requirement to guests from overseas.

Apparently Matsukawakan was unaware of this requirement, and also, unlike many other hotels in Japan, does not require pre-payment at the time of check-in. Still, assuming that at least one of the two travelers was required to give their name when making the reservation, and that said name wasn’t a false one, it seems like investigators coordinating with immigration authorities should turn up at least one potential lead.

With Japan’s inbound tourism boom continuing, it’s likely that these won’t be the last foreign travelers to book a night at Matsukawakan, and hopefully the next ones will be more scrupulous.

Source: Twitter/@matsukawakan (1, 2, 3), Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
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