Sleeping in a Giant Doorless Microwave With no Door or Heat Controls

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A.K.A Capsule Hotel Osaka!

Ok, so it's not much like a microwave then, save for the fact that the walls are white and metal, and it's a rectangular shape.

I had to make an early trip to the airport, so I decided to overnight in osaka. Rather than sleep on a park bench (which i'm told a lot of students do for lack of funds), I booked a room...ahem....capsule for one night. The earliest train from my place (5.55am) would have resulted in my being at least an hour late to meet Danilo at Kansai airport, so this was the better option. It served 2 purposes. One, to be there at the arrivals gate on time, and 2, to fulfil a long time dream of mine, which was, yes, to sleep in a long white box, in a row and column of other white boxes. When you put it like that it doesn't sound so attractive, but this hotel had amenities which made up for that, despite the fact that they kept us women in the basement.

There were vending machines (of course, this is Japan), pachinko machines, arcade game machines, washing machines and drying machines. A capsule hotel is the perfect set-up for businessmen (and women), or people who miss the last train home and want a nice place to stay. They even had sterilised hair brushes, and a dressing room a theatre could be proud of, for us ladies to prepare ourselves for the day ahead (and at 5am, what a lot of preparing to be done!).

I went out the night before to explore the Doutonbouri nightscape, and sample some delicious Osaka takoyaki, and I ended up meeting 3 crazy characters at a Jazz and takoyaki bar. I hung out with them until about 3am, speaking very rudimentary Japanese, before heading to the hotel to bathe in a (gasp!) public bathroom. Japanese people really aren't squeamish about getting naked together! They have a large room for women to shower and bathe in, and presumeably have the same facilities for men - i didn't go searching. Luckily, for my first experience, I got shower, swan around in a hot tub bigger than my bed (at home, not my futon here) and sauna all by myself.

After sleeping in my capsule however, my wake up shower was not one of solitude. I changed into my towel in a room with other women, and then we all went into the big bathroom to sit at our different shower stations, and we gt to the business of getting clean. In Japan, you shower before bathing, and it was an extremely surreal experience for me. I thought 'Wow, right now, I am sitting naked in a room with 2 other Japanese women....how bizarre', but since they didn't make an issue of it, neither did I. A friend's advice was to get into 'Greek Goddess' mode, and just imagine that you can blind everyone with your splendour. I didn't quite go that far, but I wasn't hiding, I wasn't ashamed, I was just me, wearing my birthday suit. I could really get used to it you know....Bring on Onsen season!

The next morning I headed out to the airport, sleep deprived, and, if i'm honest, a tad hungover, to greet my man at the arrival gates! Unfortunately, it wasn't one of those tearful emotional greetings, but rather, a zombified, awkward, 'i haven't seen you in 4 months i don't know the protocol for this how's it going?' kind of ones...but we got thorugh it and managed to get the 6 trains home, and ate some sushi too!

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Photos

All set to go outside!
No, there is no outbreak or anything...I decided to spare my fellow train riders, my cold.

Capsule Hall
The like to keep us women in the basement

Arcade Machines
This Capsule Hotel was fully kitted out!

Washers and dryers
This Capsule Hotel was fully kitted out!

Comments

[anonymous]

Are you now partying with randoms under the lights of the glico man?? Lol you crack me up!

[teecha_nikky]

Nooo...
I was partying with randoms a whole 1 km away from the glico man thankyou very much. ^_^ I did have a short conversation with another random under the lights of the glico man though....how did you guess?