Rooms
Generally a big communal tatami room for the guys, sometimes with bunks, sometimes shared with women, and often a smaller separate space for women. Generally no bedding. Bring your own sleeping bag, though sometimes, a single blanket or bean-bag pillow or futon cover provided free or for a small charge (150 ¥).

Baths
Not available in the rider house themselves, though there was always a sento and usually an onsen within 5 minutes walk.

Laundry
Coin laundry machines either available in the rider house, or within 5 minutes walk.

Toilets
Generally, rank-smelling non-flush hole in the grounds, easily the least pleasant aspect of the rider houses. Only Rider House Friend had flush toilets.

General Condition of the Houses
Usually old buildings, sometimes ramshackle, though warm and dry, and with no obvious vermin. Even in the free Hamatonbetsu house, which was probably condemned, there was a space heater and a TV.

Availability
Completely random. On my mountain bike, I would go for days finding rider houses in every town, and then hit a dry spell. They appeared to be sparse around the national parks. Once you find one, you're pretty much in. Thinking back on it, I think that if I had just showed up at the two places that turned me down on the phone because I was a woman alone, I would have gotten in. I never saw anyone turned away for lack of space.

Hours
Completely flexible generally, though most folks came off the road in the late afternoon, hit the sack by 10 or 11 and left by 6 or 7.

Food
No cooking facilities. No food available except occasional handouts by kind owners. Always nearby restaurants. Many of the riders carried camp stoves and cooked in or near the rider house. Some places had random cement areas inside the house which were okay for cooking, some didn't.

Who Can Stay
Though designed to suit cyclists and motorcycle riders, I figure just about anyone could stay. A few places had "mai cah" (car travellers) on the sign, along with "raida" (motorcyclists) and "charida" (cyclists), which might be stretched to include hitchhiking backpackers. None of the owners I met seemed in the least inclined to get technical about modes of transport.

Prices
Unbelievably cheap. Of the five houses I stayed in the cheapest was free, and the most expensive 750 yen, though I did hear of one new, deluxe place for 1000 ¥.