Visit to a Capsule Hotel

［Fall 2007］

On my last trip to Japan, I hadn’t booked anyplace to stay for the first night. I had been busy before arriving and basically thought “Well, I won’t die, and I can just wander around in Osaka until I find a capsule hotel to stay at.” My plane landed at Kansai International Airport around 8 PM, but by the time I had cleared customs and taken the train into town, it was already 10, and it was drizzling. “Well, this may not have been the most brilliant idea that I ever had.” I said to myself as I walked past the chicken skewer shops, sushi restaurants and bars west of the station. It was a Saturday night in downtown Osaka, and all I wanted to do was find a place to sleep. However, the rain made the city quieter, and while it was dark and wet, the air had not yet turned cold. After fifteen minutes walking in circles near the station, I decided to head north a bit towards Shinsaibashi, where I had formerly spent many a good night partying in the clubs. I didn’t know if I would be able to find a capsule hotel, but at least it would be good to be wandering in an area that I knew well. I crossed a bridge over a canal and passed into Shinsaibashi, looked west at the first intersection and saw a brightly-lit sign, which, being a bit out of it, I read slowly “ka-pu-se-ru”- well, finding it wasn’t so difficult after all.

Having never stayed in a capsule hotel before, I really wasn’t sure exactly what the check-in procedure entailed, but luckily there were some Japanese guys who had checked in directly in front of me, so I just copied what they had done and got through quite smoothly. The choices I got were simple I chose ‘upper’ rather than ‘lower’ capsule, meaning that I would have to climb up to get into bed, and everything else was standard. I left my shoes in a cabinet near the door and then strolled into the perfectly-designed world of the capsule hotel. I consciously took note of the fact that while I was in the capsule hotel, there was no need that I had that had not been taken into account. I walked in and realized I didn’t have a towel, and there were towels inside. I put on the shorts and shirt that the capsule hotel supplied, which were comfortable and loose fitting, and then went to boil myself in the baths located upstairs.

Having just come from China, where the water is full of heavy metal and leaves one covered with chemicals even after showering, the first shower taken outside of the country is always special. I could feel the water taking everything coated on my skin off, and used a pumice and soap until my skin became raw. Next, I sat in the hot bath until my heart began to pound and I became dizzy. To cool off, I walked onto the terrace and stood steaming as the rain misted down.

Only one person spoke to me during the entire time that I was in the capsule hotel. While I was in the bath, the guy sitting next to me asked how to get a six-pack. I told him that my method was practicing tai chi and also doing qigong, and drinking less beer. He just laughed.

The crowd at the hotel was mainly either younger guys or middle-aged salarymen who had come in after a night of drinking. Costing about 3000 yen per night and also containing a washing machine, I figured that there were probably people in the capsule hotel who actually lived there. “In many ways this beats the YMCA,” I thought. Apart from inconvenience of a lack of copious storage space, the price of a month of capsule hotel would cost the same as renting an apartment in downtown Osaka. The thought of an overcrowded future with everyone living in such capsules flashed into my mind briefly. “But then where would people go to do it,” I wondered, “love hotels I suppose, problem solved, “I thought.

The capsule itself gave me about 6 inches of spare room when I was stretched out at full-length. It contained a television and a radio, which were controlled by a panel set up on the wall. I turned on the radio at low volume to drown out the sound of the snoring coming from somewhere across the hall, and then adjusted the air vent in the capsule in order to give me enough fresh air to sleep. I cut the light and plunged into the oblivion of dark sleep. Sleeping in a capsule hotel is probably the closest experience I have had to sleeping inside of a closed coffin.