Imagine a
salaryman... imagine he has been busy working until 3am ... on attaining the 6th level of
hashigo in
Shinjuku. At this time of night there are no
trains left. This poor soul has work at 8:30am and he lives 2 hours away in
Yokohama. He doesn't have 20,000 yen(114 yen= US$1) to pay for a
taxi and he didn't get lucky enough to find a
mochikaeri and go to a
love hotel. He has no other options, so what does he do?
He goes to a capsule hotel.
Capsule hotels range in price from anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 yen, so
capsule hotels are
cheap compared to business hotels and
love hotels, and there are lots of 'em. But of course there is a bad thing about
capsule hotels, they are really really small. At
capsule hotels, you don't sleep in a
room, you sleep in a, well, for lack of other words - a
capsule. You know, like one of those
hibernation units (a
box) in
Aliens or
2001: A Space Odyssey. But, they are cheap and it is better than sleeping at the train
station with the
homeless who sit around and do nothing but read the
Nihon Keizai Shinbun and other fine newspapers.