Capsule Hotels

The Millennials sits a short walk uphill from Shibuya's crossing, above the noise rather than in it. Its sleeping units are a step away from the classic capsule: each is a wide pod with a powered bed that raises into a sofa during the day, a projector aimed at the ceiling, and a small tablet that controls the lot. The result is a unit you can sit up in and work from, which the older format never really allowed.

The shared floor is where the hotel spends its energy. A long co-working lounge runs most of the length of the building, free to guests and busy through the day; there is a communal kitchen, a bar counter with a short free-drink hour in the evening, and enough power sockets that nobody is hunting for one. The clientele skews young, solo and working.

Practicalities are handled well: secure luggage storage, laundry, and floors separated by gender. Sound discipline is enforced quietly and it works. For a first capsule stay in Tokyo it is an easy recommendation, mostly because it removes the two things people fear about the format — claustrophobia and nowhere to sit.

The Kyoto house runs the same pod system as its Tokyo sibling — reclining smart bed, ceiling projector, tablet control — in a city that keeps very different hours. It stands in the central grid a few minutes from Kawaramachi and the Nishiki market arcade, which puts most of the old town within walking distance and the river within two minutes.

Because Kyoto empties earlier in the evening, the lounge here reads as a workroom rather than a bar. Coffee in the morning, long tables, a short social hour, and then quiet. Guests tend to be out at temples from early, back in the afternoon, and out again for dinner, so the building has a rhythm that Tokyo's does not.

The essentials are the same and equally sound: lockers, showers, laundry, a simple breakfast. What you are buying is a central address at a compact price, in a city where central addresses are otherwise expensive and often booked out months ahead.

Global Cabin is the plainer, more traditional end of the format, and better for it. The units are cabins rather than capsules — a little taller, with a door rather than a curtain — laid out along narrow corridors on the upper floors. There is no projector and no tablet. There is a bed, a light, a socket, and silence.

The draw is the bath. A large communal bathing area on one of the lower floors does the heavy lifting that a cabin cannot, and for a certain kind of traveller the sequence of bath, cold drink, cabin, sleep is the entire argument for staying in one of these places. Towels, robes and toiletries are provided, as is standard in the category.

Suidobashi itself is a useful base: Tokyo Dome and its surrounding complex are a short walk one way, the second-hand bookshops of Jimbocho the same distance the other, and two rail lines meet at the station. It is not a design hotel and does not pretend to be one.