Written by: Dave Owen

A Tokyo hotel is offering rooms for female guests to go for a good cry

It's not unusual to find a trip to Japan a little overwhelming. The crowded cities, language barriers, and brazen attitude toward things Brits prefer to keep behind suspiciously crispy curtains often swill together into a stressful cocktail of confusion, culture shock, and embarrassing customs checks.

Thankfully a hotel in Tokyo has come up with the answer: dedicated rooms equipped with everything you need to lie back, think of England, and cry the horror away. Well, if you're a woman, anyway.

Do you enjoy being condescended to? Great! The 'crying rooms' of Mitsui Garden Yotsuya hotel in Shinjuku ward come fully loaded with soft tissues that won't make your eyes go puffy, feather-soft eye masks, make-up remover to avoid unsightly mascara streaks, and a choice selection of sentimental films to induce your eyeballs into squirting salty gouts of sadness water.

Films include 1995 Oscar winner Forrest Gump, about a man who fights bullies, the Vietnamese, and his own moronicism, A Moment to Remember, a South Korean film about a couple that fights Alzheimer's disease, and the Japanese film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, in which the titular canine family fight an earthquake.

Reports that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 1 Night in Paris were removed from the shortlist at the last moment for stimulating the wrong kind of crying remain unverified.

As to why the 'crying rooms' are available only to women, we think it's safe to assume it's because female travellers have such a fragile disposition, are so crippled by their propensity for needless human emotion, and are generally so weak that on any journey they must take regular weeping breaks to keep from bursting into a fine mist of menstrual blood.

And everyone knows that boys don't cry.