The combination of classic American kitsch and the Japanese love for it makes Las Vegas a mandatory stop on any Japanese person's tour of the U.S. This is how I find myself in Las Vegas now with two Japanese home stay students.
As we drove up to our $290 million, 4,000-room hotel, I noticed the girls had terrified expressions on their faces. That's when I realized that to Japanese people, the Excalibur Hotel, which is designed after a medieval castle with a drawbridge, moat and phantasmagorical spires, looks like a giant version of a Japanese love hotel. I assured the girls that this was not the case, but with the flashing marquee advertising the hotel's all-male revue from Australia called "Thunder From Down Under," I was hardly convincing.
Next door to the Excalibur stands the 30-story pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel, the second-largest hotel in the U.S., with 4,408 rooms. On down the Las Vegas strip were more and more giant hotels. Do we really need such big hotels? Yes -- to accommodate the big spenders.