japan kagurazaka tokyo urban_scenery

Part 1 of 3

Jasmine and her friends arrived in Japan 1 day after I had to move out of my Ginza apartment. This left me with one day in-between to find some temporary accommodation. I elected to try staying in one of those mystical CAPSULE HOTELS that I’ve heard so much about on social media.

In case you haven’t seen photos of them, a capsule hotel is essentially just an accommodation where instead of renting out rooms or suites for the night, you rent out a small rectangular prism of space inside a wall that has nothing more than a twin-sized futon and probably a few hooks for your coats. That’s it. Oh and probably a little light.

In any case, I booked a small capsule for myself that night, and went to check-in at the ungodly hour of 11:00 PM (their latest available check-in time), and when I got there, they told me that they’d messed up the bookings and there were no capsules available?? Kinda sus.

But as a result of that booking mistake on their part, they offered to upgrade me to a suite-style room with a kitchen, a queen-sized bed, and a personal bathroom, all for free! Well I mean, I was slightly upset about not getting to try the capsule hotel experience, but I guess I’ll take a free room upgrade anyway.

After getting settled into the room at nearly 12:00 AM, I was just simply not feeling like staying in my room. The hotel building seems like it was jam packed into whatever space could be found in the already fully-occupied neighbourhood, and so there were outdoor hallways twisting and turning around all these unexpected corners, with metal railings stretching up, down, left, and right, and overall everything was just an architecturally chaotic mess.

But that kind of chaos in the middle of the dark night felt so inviting.

Part 2