Hotel LED Flash Light

Up to now every hotel in Japan I have been to, was equipped with a flash light. I havent seen this in any other country and I don't really know why this seems to be common here.

Also, in two of three places the flash light was a Toshiba KFL-321. It is a small and presumably cheap white LED flash light which sits in a stand attached to a wall or piece of furniture.

The mechanism is dead simple: The stand has a flat plastic latch that protrudes through a little slot into the lamps enclosure, where it keeps the the two batteries pushed appart from each other.

As soon as you pick up the flash light from its stand, the latch does no longer seperate the batteries from each other, so they slide onto each other by the force of the sping at the end of the flash light. This closes the circuit and the LED lights up.

I find this odd for two reasons. First, why would anyone need a flash light in a hotel room? Second, what good is a flash light which you can't switch off anywhere else than in its stand?

Of course you can switch it of anywhere by unscrewing the head a few turns. But the writing on the lamp "常備灯" (somthing like "steady light") indicates that this is not the intended mode of operation.

Update: This concept seems to be the standard for Japanese hotels and there are other manufacturers too.

In Hiroshima I stayed in a quite stylish hotel and they had a flashlight attached to the bedpost. It looked a bit different but worked the same way. Except that it fell appart immedeately when I took it from the holder.