Personal space

Last night I dreamed about playing guitar.  I was in the sun-drenched side room of a restaurant called the Rose and Thistle, a joint in my hometown that used to host a regular jam session until it got torn down about 20 years ago or so.  It was so nice to play guitar with friends and sing, it was really a pleasant dream.  It is also an indication of how much I miss playing guitar, it is not something that I have been able to do while I am here.

I was not, I suppose it is obvious, at the Rose and Thistle last night.  I was in 9 Hours Kyoto, which was a real trip.

9 Hours Kyoto is a "capsule hotel,' a distinctly Japanese method of storing people for a night.  They were developed for traveling businessmen who were going to work all day and then go out drinking with their buddies and just needed a place to crash and then shower in the morning.  Some of them even rent beds hourly.  Most of them are men-only.  

If you google capsule hotel you will see some pretty great images.  Some of them are pretty bleak-looking, actually, ours was not bad at all.  In fact, ours was pretty amazing.  It looks like where Storm Troopers sleep, all white plastic and futur-y.

Men and women are on different floors, and have different bathing facilities.  They even have different lounges, there is a women-only lounge if someone wants to use the wi-fi without a drunk Japanese businessman accosting them.

So you get a locker, and you get a capsule.  The capsules are pretty wild.  I have been explaining them to the students as "21st century tatami mats" which is pretty much what they are.  Tatami mats are about three feet by seven feet, and have been the standard measurement of square footage in Japan for hundreds of years.  The standard tea house, for example, is four and a half tatami in size.  A bedroom might be three tatami.  Interesting unit of measurement really, one that is based on the average size of a person.  I like the idea of measuring built environments by the size of a person, that makes sense to me.

The capsules are a bit bigger than that, about four feet wide and maybe seven and a half feet long, with a roll blind at the end that you can pull down from inside for privacy.  They are about four feet tall, too, with a mattress that covers the whole space.  So you crawl in and you are in a spacious enough bed.  All of the capsules are stacked in one room, an upper row and a lower row extending off of a wall in a black-painted hallway.  The rule is no talking in the capsule room, and no 'phone conversations either, so it is pretty quiet.  There are white noise machines whirring, and it was really quite restful.

There is a very clean shower and dressing room, with a half dozen sinks and maybe a dozen showers, all of it extremely clean and pretty nicely laid out, and there is sleep wear in your locker, so after you check in you take a shower and put on your sleep wear and go down to bed.

It really is ingenious, and a great and cheap method of staying some where safe over night.  This joint is non-smoking, even.  Below are some photos.  I am blogging these days from the iPad, so I am having trouble figuring out how to caption the photos.  Sorry about that.  Also, over the next several days we are traveling quite extensively, so reportage may be spotty.  I'll post when I can, with more regular reports when we get to Tokyo on the 31st.