Lurrrrve hotel.

I believe I mentioned a February or two ago that I stopped hanging a big red heart on the front door for Valentine's Day. It just made the place look like a love hotel (say it with your best Barry White voice: Lurrrrve hotel). 

But what does that have to do with this guy?

The great motels that once dotted the fruited plains are largely gone, or turned into senior or welfare housing, or still running as No-Tell Motels, the kind you rent by the hour and hope the germs on the sheets don't kill you. I have a feeling, though, that they may be somewhat nicer in the Eastern World, because of the Love Hotel emoji in all its variations.

And they are exactly the same as our little hourly rentals on the cheatin' side of town -- what they call in the business "short stay" rooms. 

So I'd rather not have the house look like one of these emojis. 

But what does that have to do with Mario?

You may know that Nintendo was founded as a playing card company in 1889, manufacturing the beautiful cards called Hanafuda. The company was very successful. But by the 1950s, company president Hiroshi Yamauchi realized that playing cards were a fading business. This would lead to the company's entry into other games, including video games. It also led to some unsuccessful diversification ventures, like instant rice and a TV network. Also: A Love Hotel! 

As Kotaku.com says, "The location and name of Nintendo's hotel seems lost to the pages of time. Like many of Yamauchi's ventures, the hotel was a failure. According to The History of Nintendo, local newspapers noted that it might have an upside for the married Nintendo president: 'The only benefit Yamauchi might have derived from this is that this time he and his partners don't need to pay for the rooms, and that might in the end constitute a substantial saving.' Yamauchi's reign at Nintendo was marked by his repeated desire to, like any good businessman, find new markets. If the love hotel or the copy machine or even the soup with noodles ventures had worked out, Nintendo would have become a very different company."

But getting back to the Love Hotel emoji -- why do we even have a Love Hotel emoji? As far as I know, it's the only emoji that was created with the intent to be salacious. (The eggplant just started life as an eggplant, I will assume.) Married couples almost never go to rent-a-rooms; why pay rent or the mortgage and not use your own place? The Love Hotel is a curiously provocative symbol in a library of symbols that are silly, stupid, or weird. 

Oh, well. Some guys go to all kinds of trouble to get a date. Who am I to judge what they do when they get one? 

"Hang inna there, baby! I gotta rooma reserveda!"