Forrest Brown

I had only rented my serviced apartment in Tokyo for the month of August, but I was flying back to Los Angeles on September 4th, so I needed to stay in hotels for the last couple of days before heading back home. One of the hotels I decided to stay in was the Green Plaza Capsule Hotel in Shinjuku. I had heard about capsule hotels before going to Japan and they seemed like such as strange idea that I thought it would be interesting to try one for a night to see what it was like.

The idea behind a capsule hotel is that main reason you stay in a hotel is to sleep. So a capsule hotel pushes that idea to the extreme, instead of a room, you just have a bed inside a small compartment, about 6 feet deep, 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall. The idea is similar to hostels, but instead of a bunch of people all sharing one big room, everyone has their own little capsule.

Most capsule hotels are located near busy train stations. In Japan the trains and subways only run until about midnight, so it’s fairly easy to miss the last train home if your out with friends and not paying attention to the time. Since many people live quite a ways from central Tokyo, it could be a very expensive taxi ride home. At about $45 for the night, the capsule hotel makes for a cheaper alternative.

Capsule Hotel

Rows of capsules. I'm not sure how many capsule there were in total, but each floor had a bunch of hallways, all lined with capsules.

I'm 6 feet 1 inch tall and I just fit into the capsule. When I laid down my head touched the back wall and my feet touched the curtain

There's really no door in the capsules, just a curtain that you can pull down, so you can hear people walking down the hallway or snoring. Each capsule has it's own build in TV and radio.

The Green Plaze Capsule Hotel in Shinjuku Japan. The hotel was not super obvious to find, I walked by it twice before realizing this was it.

Once I fond the capsule hotel, it was still a little tricky to actually get to the check in lobby. You first had to take the stairs down to the basement.

Once in the basement, you had to find the elevator in the back of the building and go to the 4th floor where the men's hotel lobby was. Women's lobby was on the 8th floor. Men and women are completely separated by floors.

The sign says the people with poor posture are not allowed. Actually, like most Onsen, you're not allowed to use this hotel if you have tattoos.

Once you get to the hotel's lobby, there are little lockers for your shoes. You first put your shoes in them. Then when you check in, you give the front desk your shoe locker key. When you check out or want to leave the hotel, you have to pay for any food you purchased in the hotel before getting your shoes back.

When you check in you're given a wrist band with a key for a clothes locker and a Japanese robe to wear while in the Hotel. On the backside of the wristband is a bar-code that can be used to buy food from vending machines or the hotel restaurant. Whatever you purchase in the hotel is automatically added to your bill

You change into the robe they gave you when you checked in and put your clothes in your locker.

Since, one of the main clients for capsule hotels are people who stayed out too late and missed the last train home, there's a little store where you can buy whatever you need to go into work the next morning.

The hotels had vending machines, a restaurant, TV rooms, a massage room and an onsen. You could buy food or drinks from the restaurant or vending machines by having the bar-code on your wristband scanned. You then pay for everything when you check out.

Bathroom

Everything you needed to stay overnight was supplied. Here's a bunch of toothbrushes.

Toilets

Overall my experience in the capsule hotel was pretty interesting. But, I didn’t really get a good nights sleep, the bed was just a thin cushion over the hard bottom of the capsule, so it was not very comfortable, but actually being in the capsule didn’t really bother me.

Interesting place to park bicycles. Many people ride bikes in Japan so you have the problem of where to store your bikes. This apartment building solved it by having the bike parking on the roof.

If you walked around one of the busier train station first thing in the morning you’ll almost always see a few people sleeping on the sidewalks. You would see an occasional homeless person, but what I always thought was amazing was the number of not homeless people that you would see sleeping on the sidewalks. Business men who had missed the last train home or people who had tried to party all night and had not quite made it all the way to morning.

Probably not the best dress to wear if you're going to sleep on the sidewalk

I like how neat and organized he is. His bike is sitting nice and straight, he's spread newspaper out to sleep on. What's a little strange is that it's 11:00 in the morning and he's still sleeping away.

Outside of one of the south entrances to Shinjuku station is a little area were it looks like several homeless people are living. I was walking by the area one day and noticed that the homeless guys had set up a little fish tank.

If you live in a city where the major form of transportation is trains and subways, and you want to play a musical instrument, it’s probably a good idea to carefully consider what kind of instrument you would like to play.

This guy chose poorly. Having to cary a double bass on a busy Tokyo train would really suck.

She did a little better job with her choice of musical instruments.

Much better

While in Japan I saw these Haagen Dazs ads for their Crispy Sandwich everywhere. I wasn’t sure at first what bothered me about the ad. But then I realized that the way she’s holding the ice-cream sandwich is completely strange. Who would hold an ice-sandwich like that? The sandwich is pretty obviously Photoshopped in after the photo was taken. Also, it looks like they wanted to change the angle of the middle finger, but now it makes a strange bend like someone broke her finger.

I don’t normally think about Japan and a Brazilian Samba Carnival together, but that’s what happens every summer in Japan’s version of the Rio Carnival in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. Almost 5000 participants paraded through the streets of Asakusa in wild, sexy and sometimes strange costumes. This year was the 30th anniversary of the Asakusa Samba Carnival.

One of the reasons for a Japanese Samba Carnival is that Japan and Brazil have had a long connection, with Brazil having the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan because of the over 200,000 Japanese farmers who moved to Brazil to work on the coffee plantations in the early 1900′s.

When I think of Samba, the first thing that comes to mind is women is elaborate, sexy outfits that don’t hide a whole lot and the Asakusa Samba Carnival was no different. Here’s some of the sexier photos I shot.

Her outfit really is not hiding much

The Asakusa Samba Carnival is made up of almost 20 different groups of performers. With local groups from Japan and also groups from Brazil. Some of the bigger groups had several hundred people in them made up of marching bands, dancers, singers, other performers and usually also a parade float. Each of the groups had a different theme that everyone in that group was coordinated to. Many of the themes seemed pretty normal, but as the parade when on, the themes seemed to get stranger and stranger, with themes like Egypt, Mexico, Food, Space, The Zodiac, and some that were so strange that I wasn’t sure what the theme was other then to maybe see how strange they could be.

Hairy chested men in dresses is always a bit strange

Egyptian Theme. This guy was really getting into his role.

This group had a food theme