The Erotic Sounds of a Capsule Hotel
As previously mentioned, traveling in Japan is an expensive affair. This is true not
only for casual foreign passers-by but also for tens of thousands of Japanese
business travelers who need to keep their company’s budgets in line but get to
places promptly and rapidly. For them,
staying far away from train stations and other nodes of public transportation
simply is not a viable option. To be
on-time to visit their clients and return to headquarters, they need to keep to
downtown areas where they can come and go quickly.
However, downtown areas, being, well, downtown, tend to be
especially expensive in an already high Japanese level of lodging
expenses. JR Hakata Station, being the
busiest train station in both the city of Fukuoka
and the entire island of Kyushu
The Japanese hospitality industry’s solution is the capsule
hotel. Instead of putting rooms into a
regular building, they put what is akin to bunk beds, put side by side with
plastic walls in between each, across entire floors. The same building that can handle a few dozen
rooms can now easily pack in hundreds.
To further save space, baths, restaurants, and toilets are all
communal. The only personal space of
each customer is the locker to put his personal things, and the capsule, with a
bed, TV, and a bamboo separation screen.
Imaginable even to people who have never seen a capsule
hotel, a separation screen, with can be hoisted and lowered as the customer
enters the capsule, is not exactly the most sound-proof thing in the
world. Lying in bed, the customer can
easily hear footsteps of others walking through the corridors between capsules,
eating in bed, talking with others, and snoring away while deeply asleep. The sounds are often so obvious that one can
judge by the loudness and direction to figure out which capsule it may come
from.
But probably the worst part of capsule’s lack of sound
insulation is the TV. While many capsule
hotels have earphone plugs for TV, many, including the one the author is
staying tonight, do not. This means that
in the quiet part of the night, customers can overhear what others are watching
on TV, no matter how much the TV watchers attempt to turn the volume down. The bulk of Japanese entertainment shows,
consistent of comedic banters, tend to be inherently loud. This adds to the volume projection across the
floor.
While the regular comedy shows can be understandable, some
customers take a step deeper. As part of
the service, TVs in capsule hotels (which, by the way, are exclusively
male-clients-only establishments) offer adult entertainment channels, featuring
24 hours of Japanese porn…which also tend to be loud. It can be annoyingly amusing to be woken up
by sounds of female moaning coming from down the corridor at 2am , sometimes from different directions at the
same time.
It is only more amusing when ones see the hustle and bustle
of people checking out of the hotel the morning after. Over 90% of the customers getting out are in
full-on suits, ready for a day’s hard professional work after what probably was
a relaxing night of soaking in the baths, having some post-bath beers, and letting it loose with some TV programs. Many of the businessmen checking out are also in pairs of twos and threes, possibly
on the same business trip. Hopefully
there is no awkwardness at night…
At the end of the day, though, the behavior is
understandable. Middle-aged businessmen
in Japan do
work hard, and those often sent away for business trips tend to spent long
duration away from wives and lovers.
The loneliness can be overbearing that they would risk judgments by
colleagues and hundreds of strangers just so that they feel a bit more human
(?). Perhaps this is the same reason why
all the red light districts in Japan are doing so well despite economic difficulties.
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