Capsule Hotels

Nine Hours reduces a stay to three parts — an hour to wash, seven to sleep, an hour to get ready — and designs the building around that sequence. The Shinjuku-North branch is a clean expression of it: white moulded capsules stacked in rows, a signage system that tells you exactly where to go without a word of explanation, and a locker floor that separates your luggage from your sleeping level entirely.

The result is unusually restful for a hotel of this type. Lighting inside the unit is tuned to bring you up gradually rather than by alarm. Shower rooms are kept to a standard that would embarrass a lot of conventional hotels, and the towel-and-amenity routine is fixed so there is nothing to work out at two in the morning.

There is no lounge to linger in and no attempt at one. This is a hotel for people who will be out all day and back late, and it charges and behaves accordingly.

Rather than a capsule, The Millennials gives you a 'smart pod' — a unit with a bed that tilts up on a motor into a sloped sofa, controlled from a phone handed to you at check-in. It sounds like a gimmick and largely is, but it solves a real problem: it gives a capsule guest somewhere to sit that is not a bed and not a corridor.

The social side is where this one differs most from the others. There is a big co-working lounge, a kitchen, a bar, and an evening drink that gets people talking. Guests here tend to stay several nights and work part of the day, which changes the atmosphere entirely from a transit hotel.

The location is central Kyoto, a short walk from the Kawaramachi shopping streets and the river, which is most of the reason to choose it. Light sleepers should bring the eye mask — the units are curtained rather than doored.

The conceit is a bookshop you are allowed to fall asleep inside. Bunks are built into the shelving, so the wall of your sleeping space is spines, and the shared area is arranged for reading rather than socialising. Volumes run in Japanese and English, chosen with a browsing reader in mind rather than a reference library.

It is worth being clear about what this is not. There is no restaurant, no spa, and the bathrooms are shared and can queue at peak hours. What it offers instead is atmosphere, a very good Shinjuku position, and a genuinely quiet room policy that the staff enforce.

Two bunk sizes are offered, one with a window onto the shelves and one tucked behind them. The deeper option is darker and better for sleeping; the shelf-side one is better if you intend to read until you stop.

Anshin Oyado is the comfort-first end of the category, and it shows in the bathing floor: a proper large bath with sauna, treated as the centre of the stay rather than an afterthought. Guests change into house wear on arrival and stay in it, which gives the place the rhythm of a small urban onsen with beds attached.

The capsules themselves are wide, with a firm mattress, a decent reading light and air handling that keeps them from getting stuffy. Free amenities are generous — drinks, a soak, breakfast items — and the lounge has enough desks that working there is realistic.

Shinbashi is a business district, and the guest list reflects it, which mostly means the floors go quiet early. Several branches operate under the same name in Tokyo; this one is the easiest to reach and the one most people mean.