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Typical Japanese-style accommodation, known as ‘ryokan’, are lavish and indulgent. The rooms are often a spacious spread of tatami mats, the meals are grand (and very filling!), and the bathing facilities allow space to relax in the natural hot spring water without worrying about touching skin with a fellow bather. In a nation of little space, a ryokan experience is the ultimate luxury for many Japanese. For a more modern take on Japanese accommodation, however, the element of personal space is all but disregarded.
Capsule hotels, offering a sleeping compartment little larger than a single bed, provide customers with all their basic needs. There are often large communal bathing facilities, a snack bar, breakfast, and provide an excellent location from which to see the heart of a city. For those wishing to relax after a long day of sightseeing, they also come with a miniature television set hanging inside your personal capsule. Coupled with the fact that they are cheaper than alternative accommodation, it is little wonder that capsule hotels are often the place of choice for businessmen who have missed their last train home.
The natural competitor to the capsule hotel is of course the internet café. At around the same price as a capsule hotel, you can get unlimited soft drinks, use of a small shower, and unlimited internet access with a large screen (presumably to watch blockbuster movies into the early hours). Internet cafés also have the bonus of offering much more personal space. Some rooms have soft floors the size of a double bed, others have reclining leather seats that double as beds. There are even ‘family rooms’. Unfortunately, while in an internet café you are blessed with more room than a capsule hotel, you also get far less privacy. The rooms have locks, but the walls are paper-thin, and often it is possibly to peer over the top of your ‘walls’ into the adjoining rooms, or even into the corridor. Save for the easy access to the internet, the travellers preferred option should be the capsule hotel.
The word ‘capsule’ in Japanese tends to carry a more positive meaning than its English counterpart. While native English speakers may think ‘small’, the word in Japanese has its origins in technological advancement. This was the intention of the original capsule hotel, when it was first conceived in Osaka (it also explains the vision behind the name of the gaming corporation ‘Capcom’, a shortening of ‘capsule computer’). This may also be the reason why Japanese companies have long had an obsession with innovative technology to ever smaller physical proportions. Tiny cars, small portions, and gadgets. In Japan, small is beautiful. In this sense, the capsule hotel provides an insight into Japanese culture that is conveniently affordable. While staying in accommodation arguably reminiscent of a coffin is certainly not for everyone (indeed, most capsule hotels are strictly ‘men only’), it may be worth a look if you are prepared to sacrifice a little comfort during your travels. Or, as with the scores of Japanese businessmen who arrive red-faced and with a hint of sake on their breath, you manage to miss the last train home to your larger, more conventional, Western-style hotel.
