What sounded like a scream jolted me awake at 5:54 a.m. Less than two feet away, the man in the neighboring capsule had awakened from a nightmare, but the way he followed it with three quick sneezes made me wonder if his cry was actually the first in a series of predawn sneezes. There in my narrow capsule, at the top of two stacked rows of sleepers in a warren of hallways, I rolled on my side, my knees pressed against the tan plastic wall, and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t fall back asleep.
Every sound was magnified in the polite, labored silence of the capsule hotel: a humming fan; a rattling curtain; a strange mechanical whoosh, whoosh. As time passed and the Tokyo sky lightened outside, the sound of rousing sleepers filled the hall. Men cleared their throats. One crinkled a plastic bag. Others coughed and sniffled. When a guest lowered a piece of luggage from his capsule, it hit the carpeted floor with a reverberating thud. This hotel contained 630 capsules spread throughout its many floors in what entomologists might describe as a human hive. In the neighboring cell, a man’s ring tapped the wall, rattling my ears with a clank. Seconds passed. Then some other part of his body bumped as he turned over in bed, his skin making the familiar rubbing sound as it pulled against the stiff cotton sheets. I wore earplugs, but earplugs could only filter so much.
The Green Plaza Capsule Hotel in Kabukichō, central Tokyo’s red light district, occupies a nondescript white tower on a narrow side street north of bustling Yasukuni-dori. Train tracks run beside it, diverting cross-town traffic to opposite blocks and creating a secluded section of this otherwise sleepless neighborhood of bars, love hotels, and barely concealed prostitution. What the capsule hotel calls a “room” costs 4,300 yen a night, or $36, and runs six feet long by three feet wide and three feet high. Those dimensions feel like a doghouse. Pickup trucks have bigger beds. Despite the red light location, the hotel is a respectable operation. It houses businessmen mostly, often drunk, and it segregates the sexes. Women and men stay on different floors; each group has its own traditional onsen bath and dining areas on other floors. On an upper level, men can pay half the price of a capsule to sleep side-by-side in a shared, open “napping” room, separated by dividers. A capsule is challenging; shared group space would be hell.
When I told my friends in Oregon that I’d be sleeping inside a fiberglass pod, they thought I was nuts, but my logic was simple: Small lodging meant a small bill, and in Tokyo, where budget hotels charge between $55 and $130 per night, capsules meant I could stretch my limited budget enough to stay in Japan for three weeks. If you booked in advance online, you could stay at a capsule hotel for $353.79 for 13 days. I considered it. Capsule-style hotels are coming to the US, and they’re cheap. My girlfriend swore she wouldn’t last a night. “Our closet is bigger than that,” she pointed out; we lived in a studio and stored clothes under our bed. But the time to reconsider had passed. “Thank you for booking with Expedia!” the confirmation email said.
In a capsule nearby, a man hacked, and, as I turned onto my stomach, I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping anymore that day. (...)
When traveling, I sleep in rental cars and on couches. I’ve spent the night on airport floors, in poolside chaise lounges, and in a hammock in Mt. Rainer National Park. I assumed I could handle a capsule.
Kabukichō, where Green Plaza is located, is the largest red-light district in Asia. Set inside central Tokyo’s neon intestines, bright vertical signs climb the sides of buildings and pedestrians fill the streets. Women in sequined dresses click by on high heels, long slits showing their calves, even in winter. Although prostitution isn’t legal in Japan, the law’s language makes non-coital acts permissible, so the sex trade thrives.
People come to Kabukichō to drink, to fuck, to throw up on their shoes. When they’re done, they spend the night in a capsule for the price of a fancy dinner and sweat out their hangovers in a bath the next day before catching a train home. I spent the night among them.
by Aaron Gilbreath, TMN | Read more:
Image: Matt Eshleman
Every sound was magnified in the polite, labored silence of the capsule hotel: a humming fan; a rattling curtain; a strange mechanical whoosh, whoosh. As time passed and the Tokyo sky lightened outside, the sound of rousing sleepers filled the hall. Men cleared their throats. One crinkled a plastic bag. Others coughed and sniffled. When a guest lowered a piece of luggage from his capsule, it hit the carpeted floor with a reverberating thud. This hotel contained 630 capsules spread throughout its many floors in what entomologists might describe as a human hive. In the neighboring cell, a man’s ring tapped the wall, rattling my ears with a clank. Seconds passed. Then some other part of his body bumped as he turned over in bed, his skin making the familiar rubbing sound as it pulled against the stiff cotton sheets. I wore earplugs, but earplugs could only filter so much.The Green Plaza Capsule Hotel in Kabukichō, central Tokyo’s red light district, occupies a nondescript white tower on a narrow side street north of bustling Yasukuni-dori. Train tracks run beside it, diverting cross-town traffic to opposite blocks and creating a secluded section of this otherwise sleepless neighborhood of bars, love hotels, and barely concealed prostitution. What the capsule hotel calls a “room” costs 4,300 yen a night, or $36, and runs six feet long by three feet wide and three feet high. Those dimensions feel like a doghouse. Pickup trucks have bigger beds. Despite the red light location, the hotel is a respectable operation. It houses businessmen mostly, often drunk, and it segregates the sexes. Women and men stay on different floors; each group has its own traditional onsen bath and dining areas on other floors. On an upper level, men can pay half the price of a capsule to sleep side-by-side in a shared, open “napping” room, separated by dividers. A capsule is challenging; shared group space would be hell.
When I told my friends in Oregon that I’d be sleeping inside a fiberglass pod, they thought I was nuts, but my logic was simple: Small lodging meant a small bill, and in Tokyo, where budget hotels charge between $55 and $130 per night, capsules meant I could stretch my limited budget enough to stay in Japan for three weeks. If you booked in advance online, you could stay at a capsule hotel for $353.79 for 13 days. I considered it. Capsule-style hotels are coming to the US, and they’re cheap. My girlfriend swore she wouldn’t last a night. “Our closet is bigger than that,” she pointed out; we lived in a studio and stored clothes under our bed. But the time to reconsider had passed. “Thank you for booking with Expedia!” the confirmation email said.
In a capsule nearby, a man hacked, and, as I turned onto my stomach, I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping anymore that day. (...)
When traveling, I sleep in rental cars and on couches. I’ve spent the night on airport floors, in poolside chaise lounges, and in a hammock in Mt. Rainer National Park. I assumed I could handle a capsule.
Kabukichō, where Green Plaza is located, is the largest red-light district in Asia. Set inside central Tokyo’s neon intestines, bright vertical signs climb the sides of buildings and pedestrians fill the streets. Women in sequined dresses click by on high heels, long slits showing their calves, even in winter. Although prostitution isn’t legal in Japan, the law’s language makes non-coital acts permissible, so the sex trade thrives.
People come to Kabukichō to drink, to fuck, to throw up on their shoes. When they’re done, they spend the night in a capsule for the price of a fancy dinner and sweat out their hangovers in a bath the next day before catching a train home. I spent the night among them.
by Aaron Gilbreath, TMN | Read more:
Image: Matt Eshleman
