A Real Heartbreak Hotel

It's a bit dead round here: Ghoulish hotel in Japan stores deceased in refrigerated coffins so that relatives can visit any time

It's the place where your mourning relatives can check you in when you check out of life - a real Heartbreak Hotel.

Nestled away in suburb of Yokohama in Japan, the bizarre inn looks much like any other of the city's small lodgings.

But this is no normal hotel, it is a hotel for the dead.

Room with a view: A staff member at the Lastel hotel in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, attends to one of the guests

The 18 guests are all corpses, tucked up in refrigerated coffins for 12,000 yen ($157) waiting their turn for one of the city's overworked crematoriums.
Yet unsuspecting young couples still come knocking at night, looking for a place to stay.
'We tell them we only have cold rooms,' owner Hisayoshi Teramura said.
Mr Teramura is cashing in on death which has become a rare booming market in the stagnant Japan economy.
Last year, 55,000 more people died than the previous year and over the past decade, an average of 23,000 more people have died each year in Japan.
In 2010, according to government records, 1.2 million people passed away, giving the country an annual death rate of 0.95 per cent compared to the global average of 0.84 percent.

Booming business: A monk walks past the corpse hotel in Yokohama

Do not disturb: Two of the rooms where chilled corpses in coffins are delivered through hatches through an automated storage system

Annual deaths are expected to peak at 1.66 million in 2040 as the bulk of the nation's baby boomer generation expires.

By then, Japan's population will have shrunk by around 20 million people, an unprecedented die off for a nation neither at war or blighted by famine.

But despite the country's economic problems the Japanese are still splashing out on funeral ceremonies

Cashing in: Buddhist rosaries on sale are displayed at the hotel.

 No room at the inn: Coffins lined up at the Lastel corpse hotel

The Japanese still pay an average of 1.2 million yen on flowers, urns, coffins and other funeral expenses - twice what Americans spend annually on funerals.

Mr Teramura, who founded cemetery developer company Nichiryoku, said: 'There's been a rush into the market.'

His hotel relies on an automated storage system hidden away from mourners behind its flower box framed windows.

Ghoulish job: Morticians prepare a body for an overnight stay

It stores and chills encoffined corpses, delivering them through hatches and into a viewing room, day or night, whenever friends and family come to pay their respects.

In Yokohama, the average wait for a crematorium oven is more than four days, driving up demand for half-way morgues such as Lastel.

'Otherwise people have to keep the bodies at home where there isn't much space,' Mr Teramura said.