Your Futon Away from Home

With Japanese-owned Sony dispatching executives from Tokyo to its studios and offices on the former MGM lot in Culver City, management at the nearby Culver Hotel felt the need to adapt. The hotel, best known as “no place like home” for Munchkin cast members during “The Wizard of Oz” filming in 1938, recently renovated and reopened its 46 rooms. Two of them, dubbed the “Tatami Rooms” after the rice straw mats used as floor-covering in traditional Japanese households, were designed with visiting Sony execs in mind.

The Peninsula it ain’t. Each room is raised on a foot-high platform covered with--what else?--2-inch-thick tatamis bound with heri, a colorful embroidered cloth. True to Japanese style, the matted floors are comfortable for sitting. Good thing, because the rooms lack chairs, though low-to-the-ground black-lacquered tables are suitable for sitting cross-legged. Mattresses are traditional futons.

Hotel manager James He recently placed an ad in Sony’s in-house “Blue Pages,” and the manager says low-level studio execs, as well as cast and crew members working on the lot, often stay in the hotel. But, he admits, interest in the Tatami Rooms--which rent, like the normal rooms, for $149 a night--has been negligible: “Americans prefer the normal rooms. And the Japanese? They prefer the normal rooms, too.”

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The Culver Hotel, 9400 Culver Blvd., (310) 838-7963.