Sleeps Six, Two Beds: Where the Other Four Sleep

You open the door, set the bags down, and go look at the bedrooms.

There are two beds. Six of you came.

HUMMER VILLAGE Amakusa in Kumamoto sleeps six, and its bedding note reads like this.

The beds are one double or two singles; with the four folding mattresses kept on site it sleeps up to six.

The figure of six is accurate. Nowhere does it say that six people sleep on the same thing.

The same capacity of five, in a two-bed unit and a four-bed unit

One line from Chichibu Sadamine Seiryu Camp in Saitama contains the whole problem.

There are two types, a two-bed unit with two semi-doubles and a four-bed unit with four singles, and both sleep five.

One property, one stated capacity, and two beds in one unit against four in the other.

For a party of five those are quite different nights. In one, three people sleep on something that is not a bed; in the other, one person does. The capacity figure carries none of that difference.

Only one property in six publishes what the bedding is

Of the 654 stays listed on Tomaribi, 106 go as far as a bed count: 66 villas and 40 glamping sites, or 16% of the total. Two bedrooms, eight people found 134 publishing a bedroom count, so what is in the rooms is held back more often than how many rooms there are.

Of those 106, 49 mention bedding other than a bed. Futons account for 35, lofts 23, sofa beds 16, bunk beds and extra beds six each. Counting mentions of tatami and Japanese-style rooms brings it to 57.

Roughly half of the properties willing to publish a breakdown.

Eight write down which guest tips into an extra bed

Eight of the 654 state the threshold outright.

THE BOXY AWAJI in Hyogo (sleeps 8): “Parties of seven or eight use an extra bed.” CELESTE SANTO, also in Hyogo (10): “The ninth guest onward sleeps on an extra bed.” UMIBE Ise-Shima in Mie (14) lists five bedrooms with eight singles and two doubles, then adds that “an extra bed takes it to a maximum of fourteen”. Ten people get a bed; from the eleventh it is something else.

R.KAMAKURA in Kanagawa (6): “Using the sofa bed in the living room brings it to six.” CORAL RESORT aoshima in Miyazaki (6) has two doubles, and “adding the sofa bed takes it to six”. FARM VILLA taku in Hokkaido (8): “Using the single sofa bed as an extra bed takes it to a maximum of eight.” MIYAZAKI BASE in aoshima in Miyazaki (10): “Rental futons take it to a maximum of ten.” And HUMMER VILLAGE Amakusa, with its four folding mattresses.

All eight can be read and understood, which is also how you know what the other 650 are doing. The line is drawn somewhere. It just is not written down.

FARM VILLA taku adds one more sentence: “From the fifth guest, an extra bed is charged at 5,000 yen including tax per bed per night.” Four semi-doubles, capacity eight. Four people pay the listed rate and the fifth adds 5,000 yen a night. The add-on charges from per house or per person turn up here in the shape of bedding.

Four beds can mean a capacity of four, or of eight

Espacio Onna in Okinawa has two singles and two semi-doubles across two bedrooms. Four beds in total, capacity eight. No other bedding is mentioned, which works out at two people per bed.

Villa NIGIN Amanohashidate in Kyoto has two doubles and two semi-doubles for a capacity of four. One person per bed.

Same four beds, opposite meanings.

On the one-per-bed side there is also Chikura Dog Villa in Chiba, four semi-doubles for four guests; Villa montpetre in Kagoshima, six semi-doubles for two to six; and POOL HOUSE Awaji in Hyogo, two semi-doubles in each of three rooms for six. Read only the capacity field on a booking page and none of this is visible.

Two adults on a semi-double is 60cm each

A semi-double in Japan runs around 120cm wide. Singles are about 97 to 100cm, doubles around 140cm, queens 160cm, kings 180cm and up.

Split 120cm between two people and each gets about 60cm, roughly six-tenths of a single bed. Lie on your back with your arms at your sides and that is most of it. It works for a couple, or a family with small children. For friends, or adult siblings, it usually does not.

The awkward part is how often the word appears. Counting mentions across the listings: double 53, single 38, semi-double 34, twin 34, king 27, queen 17. Semi-double is the third most common size on the site.

Almost nobody publishes an actual width. Villa VALIOSA ON THE BEACH in Okinawa, with “one Sealy king bed 2,000mm wide”, is the exception; most stop at “two semi-doubles”. How wide those two are is something you find out on arrival.

Futons are not what you lay out when the beds run short

Among the auxiliary bedding, futons sit differently.

Kinosaki Onsen Yukura in Hyogo (sleeps 6) has two semi-doubles and four futon sets in a single bedroom. It is a converted sake merchant’s storehouse, and futons suit the building better than a row of beds would.

Private Pool Villa Kouri The Sweet in Okinawa (8) has one Japanese-style room with four futon sets and two Western rooms with four semi-doubles between them. An even split, not because the beds ran out but because there is a tatami room.

AMAO VILLA Izu-Kogen in Shizuoka (12) lists one queen, one double, three singles and five futon sets. Its sibling AMAO VILLA Jogasaki (11) runs one queen, two semi-doubles, three singles and four futon sets. Both are about half beds and half futons, and were built that way.

Doggy’s Villa Kamaguchi in Hyogo has two semi-doubles, two single futon sets in the loft and one single extra bed: three kinds of bedding under one roof. L’art de vie Matsuyama in Ehime sleeps up to nine on two bunk beds and a loft. Lining up beds was never the design.

What causes trouble is the allocation, not the bedding

Nothing here ranks one kind of bedding above another, because there is no need to. The trouble is not the type. It is that who gets which one is decided after you arrive.

A sofa bed is fine for one night and can reach your back by the second morning. A loft means going down a ladder or a steep stair at two in the morning. A futon means getting up off the floor. None of that matters much. Depending on who it lands on, it matters a great deal.

Know it in advance and the split on a three-generation trip decides itself: grandparents in the beds, children on the futons. Arrive without knowing and you get a few seconds of silence in the bedroom where the bags are, until somebody says “I’ll take the sofa, then”. That arrangement usually holds until the last morning.

As how many a child counts as showed, the capacity figure answers how many people fit. It was never answering who sleeps where.

About these numbers

The denominator is 654 stays (published, duplicates excluded). 106 publish a bed count, so 552 do not. That says nothing about beds running short; publishing a bedding breakdown is simply not the convention.

The tally was taken mechanically from listings that write a number of beds or futon sets, and is not an inventory. At properties with several buildings or room types, only one type may be described. The bed widths quoted are the usual Japanese conventions, not measurements from any given property. And the eight that state an extra-bed threshold are the number that write it down, not the number that operate that way. Many more presumably do without saying so.

One line is enough

“Could you give me the bedding breakdown?”

How many beds and what size. How many sofa beds, extra beds or futon sets are included. Whether anyone sleeps in the loft. Once the reply comes back you can settle it and share it before you set off, exactly as with the room allocation.

Capacity is the maximum a property can take. How many of them get a bed is a separate number, written somewhere else. Or not written at all.

• Two bedrooms, eight people
• How many does a child count as?
• Three generations should not try to keep the same hours