Saturday, June 9, 2012

9 Hours Capsule Hotel Kyoto Teramachi (Japan)


9 Hours Capsule Hotel's philosophy is summarized in its name : A bare minimum hotel experience requires 9 hours : 1 hour to shower, 7 hours to sleep and 1 hour to rest. The hotel provides a very good capsule accommodation experience and is at a very good location (very near to Metro if you want to travel to Osaka after Kyoto and all key locations can be accessed from the bus station which is 5-10mins walk from the hotel).

9 Hours Capsule Hotel has a simple and clean design with a very modern and functional interior architecture. It is quite different and better from your typical capsule hotel. The intention of the design is to make the place so simple that the customer easily move from one step to the next taking all the extras out of the hotel experience. "Seeing old capsule hotels, I wondered; would this concept work in London and New York?" says Keisuke Yui, President of Cubic Corp. "Would people think this was a good thing? It seemed clear that they would not. The basic theory of a capsule hotel was fine. But for people today, it wasn't enough. The business itself needed to be redesigned."

"For a capsule hotel, this is actually quite good. the sleeping pod is quite spacious. clean sheets. provides many amenities. the individual lockers are small thou, if you have a large luggage, you will have to leave it at the reception, and bring along a smaller bag to keep your valuables with you." says a solo traveler from Singapore.

9 Hours Capsule Hotel - Source : 9hours.jp
Everything is provided in the hotel from sleeping wear to white towels and the shower and locker rooms are on their own floor. Sleeping floors are segregated by gender. Men and women even have separate lifts. [1]

Capsule style of hotel accommodation was first developed in Japan and only popular in Japan but some capsule style hotels also emerged in other countries.There are Western variants of these concept but almost always with larger accommodations and often with private baths. Capsule hotels greatly vary widely in size. Some capsule hotels have only fifty or so capsules while some may have over 700. The main draw of these hotels is of course the cheap accommodation they provide : you can stay in a capsule hotel for around ¥2000-4000 (US$25–50) a night.

[1] - 9 hours Capsule Hotel- A Monocle Report

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