I wanted to go to Mount Koya-san, so I decided to head from Kyoto to Osaka to give me the best chance to see Koyasan in a day. I booked in to a capsule hotel, I figured it would be an experience in itself.
I got a bit lost in Osaka, I went into a camera shop and asked the guys in there. They were really helpfull and went on to the Internet, tracked down where I was staying and printed a map out, which they then marked up with their store, so I knew the exact route I needed to walk to get to the hotel. This really made my day, having constantly dealt with frustration in Japan when travelling, it was really nice to get help like this. Later in my trip I worked out that camera/technology shops are good places to get help, as most of the people working in them speak slightly better English, I guess they get more exposure to international stuff due to working with technology.
Once I got to the capsule hotel, I had to take off my shoes and put them in a shoe locker, then you give the shoe locker key to reception who give you a clothing locker key in return. Unfortunately the clothing locker was not big enough to fit my rucksack in, so I had the fun of lots of patronising looks as reception offered to store my rucksack for me, I'd been prewarned by a backpacker about this.
It seems that capsule hotels are generally used by salarymen who get p***ed up in the evening with their colleagues and for one reason or another can't make the commute home.
You then have to go to the locker room and put on some pyjamas they give you. These are all military size (i.e. one size fits all). The Japanese guys look very Karate fierce in their pyjamas, but transfer the same size over to a six foot, slightly overweight westerner and you just look like a complete ..uhm .. idiot.
I went to check out my capsule, the capsules are as expected. The only thing which was different to what I exected, was that instead of a glass door, it just had a pull down blind made out of the same stuff those beach matts are made out of.
I thought it would be a good idea to get a shower, so I headed down to the shower room in the basement. When you get into the basement, there are lots of business men, in their pyjamas, sitting in massage chairs and watching Japanese game shows which would make Bruce Foresythe proud.
There are free razors, shaving foam and aftershave (if you don't mind Hi Karate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAnU9zT87j4 !).
I grabbed a towel and followed the symbol for showers. I then found myself in a swimming pool type place which was a bit like a roman bath. In one corner was a row of waist height showers and little plastic stools which looked like they had been nicked out of a pub wendy house.
You have to sit on the plastic stool and wash yourself down with the handheld shower (optionally you can loudly sniff and snort constantly), you then have the option to sit in a hot pool with a load of sweaty middle aged guys. After about 10 nanoseconds of thought, I decided to give the last bit a miss and just shower. Ofcourse I got the usual funny looks, being a westerner and I am sure I broke all rules of etiquette like held the shower in my right hand which probably signifies death in Japan or something. Apparently if you wrap your towel right over left that is the same as how they wrap bodies .... I'm living on borrowed time.
I then went back to my locker, got changed into my "civvies" again and went out for dinner. On returning, I hit the sack and slept quite well until about 2am when all the drunks came in and started watching "TV" in their capsules. The capsules all have coin operated TVs in the ceiling and by the sound of it, it wasn't National Georgraphic they were watching. Unfortunately the drunks obviously suffer from some kind of hearing problem which means they need their "Franky Vaughn" on full blast. They then proceed to fall asleep and snore heavily while the TV blasts out.
http://www.asahiplaza.co.jp/capcel/english.html
I would put the link to some of the capsule hotel movies, but it will probably get blocked !
