Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The Whole Story

So it�s been a very long time since my last post. Sorry about that. Anyway, I have many things to tell. So when we last left off I was heading to Fukuoka by way of Osaka. On the 18th of June I left the Alkire�s house and decided to take the Shinkansen as far as I could. By the time I got to Shin-Osaka station, however, it was really dark, and I got the feeling that even if there were trains to Fukuoka I would not arrive in time to find a place to stay. So I decided to find a Capsule Hotel. After wandering around Shin-Osaka Station for almost an hour and a half looking for the right exit, I was finally told that the hotel was in the station itself. By the way, a Capsule Hotel literally is what it sounds like. For around 30 dollars a night you get to sleep in a room that is just big enough for human habitation (by the way, I�m lucky that I am the same size as a Japanese man, my feet would have stuck out into the hallway if I had been any taller). In the hotel there is usually also a lounge and a bath. In Osaka this lounge and bath were mediocre, but the facilities in Hotel Cabinas in Fukuoka were amazing. The final feature of the Capsule Hotels that I discovered was a large green button on the capsule with a sign in Japanese. The only word that I could read on this sign was �Free�. I sat for several minutes trying to figure out what this gigantic green button was, afraid to push it but dying to know what it did. Finally I decided that if the police showed up I could always just play the stupid foreigner, and since it was �free� I pressed it. It turned on the porn. I was a little more hesitant to touch anything in the capsule after that, as I imagined the thousands of people that had stayed in that capsule before me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is great being able to enjoy your travels with this site. What an education.
M&D