capsule hotel - driected by Luc Besson

The area of Namba lies in the middle of The Osaka JR loop line. You would think this would make it very easy to get to but alas the opposite was true and it took ages to get there. On and off trains for hours whilst time ticked toward midnight. Finally I found the right stop and climbed the grubby station stairs into the hubbub of Namba. Namba is loveland. Love hotels everywhere. At night they light up and look the furthest thing from seedy, they look like magical castles or shining churches. Some have neon sign cherry blossoms floating up their ten storey exterior, some have massive inflatable creatures outside. My favourite one, a mint green chapel shaped thing had millions of fake flowers bursting out of every window and the door. I don't think Japan knows from kitsch or, at least, doesn't think of it as something bad and to be avoided. I have learned to stop worrying and love the kitsch.

Tonight I was not going to on of these temples of excess which only make economic and moral sense to couples, I was going to the soberly titled Namba Capsule hotel - an unusual capsule hotel in that it allows women (on certain floors). I found it squeezed between all the pink and florescence on a tiny side street. Inside and out it was the opposite of love land. It was all mustard carpeting and peeling wall paper. The concierge was a gruff and shabby old man with a shiny head fringed with bristly tufts. He eyed me sceptically. Had I been to one of these before he asked? No, I admitted I hadn't. Hmmm. Was I a foreigner? Yes, I said, thinking that much was obvious. Hmmmmmm....I could see him debating whether to let me stay. I wasn't sure if he thought I would be prissy and report him to some guide book authority or be a tourist and destroy the reclusive anonymity the guests desired by running amok down the corridors, drinking and taking photos. I tried to pull a face that suggested I would do neither of these things (what face is that exactly, i wonder now). It worked and he handed me a grubby key that opened one locker downstairs for my shoes and one upstairs for the rest of my stuffu. The capsule itself didnt have a lock. This would have worried me if I had been in any other country in the world.

In the lift I could barely contain my excitement. A capsule hotel! My own capsule! I couldn't wait to see it. Stepping out of the lift I was confronted first with a bank of blue metal lockers and behind them a dimly lit corridor. The capsule mouths opened straight onto the corridor - some were unoccupied and open, others had their brown blinds down, their inhabitants already asleep or doing whatever else one does in a capsule. Read? Shoot up? Mine - number 317 was on the bottom row right at the end of the passage. I clambered in and pulled down the blind. Feeling around the moulded plastic walls i found the light and flicked it on. Wow! It was my own sci-fi cell. The plastic was off white as was the bedding. It was old but clean and starchy. The dimensions were less like a coffin and more like the interior of an economy car - small indeed but not claustrophobic and to further assuage any fear of suffocation there was a small fan silently circulating the air. Along the one wall the plastic bubbled out to form a narrow shelf. At the foot of the bed the plastic bulged down housing a small tv whose remote was dangling below on a rubbery chord. There was also a tiny mirror and a digital alarm clock set into the wall. All this luxury for 200 Zed a Rands. I was so happy! Lying in my pod sipping water. I watched tv quietly for a bit, there was some space anime movie showing which complemented the situation perfectly. I could hear people in other capsules turning over, coughing and fiddling with their phones. It was comforting to hear them but never see them. It all felt extremely futurist and dystopian - storyboarded in the seventies or with the seventies in mind. Before going to sleep I nipped out to shower in the bathroom at the end of the corridor. There, as in the pod there was everything you would get in a regular hotel, just utilitarian and small . A shower box, a basket of sterilized hairbrushes, a box of single service toothbrushes in packets, a hair dryer, shampoo and soap. Little basins to spit your little toothpaste into and little stools to sit on while drying your hair.

In the morning it was still pitch black in the capsule. I turned on the yellow light, got dressed and fixed my face in the tiny mirror. I then went down to the lobby where the no-frills complementary breakfast of boiled eggs toast and coffee was being enjoyed by the guests - all of them skinny and middle aged, all of them smoking, burping and farting. I sat and ate with them. We ignored each other together. By daylight the love hotels admitted their seediness. The glamour gone, I headed back into the station.