I kind of knew that hotel rooms in Japan were small but small is being redefined here. To be honest, the small size of the room is the only down side. As always in Japan, you spot a lot of little functional enhancements, that make you wonder why you don’t have them back home.
A torch light attached to the wall with a glow in the dark button. A simple but ingenious system: a piece of plastic, makes sure that the battery is disconnect. Only when you take the torch from the holder a spring pushes the batteries and there is light! This is not rocket science right but really useful, certainly if you wake up because of an earthquake at night like I did!
The washroom size is barely twice the size of the airplane version (talking about economy class here) but it has a shower as well. Not a walk-in shower off-course but super functional. First you kinda freaky out when you sit on the toiled seat, it’s pre heated (by the toilet not the previous visitor), and it flushes (in case the previous visitor got cough up in a spicy diet). While doing whatever you need to do, try figuring out what all the buttons on the toilet control panel do. Some of them have pictures some of them don’t, have fun playing around. Clean front & back, dry, play a sound to mark your diarrhea explosion and many other options might be at your disposal. A less geeky but ecological feature is the sink which is mounted on top of the toilet, so after washing your hands the water is reused to flush the toilet next time.
Another thing you will notice is that the Japanese have something with slippers. You will see loads of slippers when you enter the house and a lonely pair in the bathroom. Why? Well Hygiene is a very important in Japanse culture, so to seperate clean from unclean you take of your dirty shoes when entering a house and wear the living room slippers. When exploring the fascinating toilet you switch to the toilet slippers. You will definitely find yourself walking in the living area with the toilet slippers, the dirtiest thing known to humanity. So put a marker on your hand to not forget to switch back to the other slippers and safe yourself from embarrassment.
Now you have had your washroom exploration it`s time to decide in what kind of bed you want to sleep.
- western bed
- futon (a mattress) on a tatami (woven mat)
- capsule (bee hive style stacked sleep boxes)
Actually you should try futon and the capsule hotel, its part of the Japan Experience. No you won’t get back problems sleeping on a futon (but I don’t blame you for thinking that) And as long as you don’t have an extreme level of claustrophobia you will be fine in a capsule hotel.
At least you can add “slept in the smallest hotel room” to your travel bucket list. In your tiny box there is a television, radio, alarm clock and sometimes a power socket. All you need after a memorable night out in Shinjuku.
Where do you shower in these little pods? Well that’s another interesting experience: the onsen (a public bath). First you have to strip down and enter a communal washing area with a bunch of little chairs next to each other. So just sit down and wash yourself before going into the public bath which is really; really hot, I warned you, really hot!
The osnen instructions from bohemiantraveler.com will clarify everything:
Japan is awesome, very different, modern and traditional, it’s fascinating, so stay tuned for more posts 🙂
“by the toilet not the previous visitor” very good humor…