Accommodating experiences
Trip Start
Dec 01, 2012
1
14
35
Trip End
Ongoing
Nikko, Tochigi, Japan
Friday, January 27, 2012
It took six hours and six separate trains to get from Osaka to the small town of Nikko, but the distance travelled was nothing compared to the gap in living standards: from the cosy spare room of Couch Surfing host Sho in Osaka, to the empty car park of the hostel, decorated with bits of rusty metal, set back from the road, cold and lonely.
Choosing the Kinugawa Inn was a mistake. It has a Ryanair approach to service: it calls itself Nikko while actually it is four stations and a line change away from the town. You have to pay extra to use the shower (two euros equivalent a time) and you can only check in during a four-hour window. The hostel literature, where it can be understood, keeps referring to its cheap price, but once the train fare and showers are factored in, the hostel is a more expensive diversion rather than a budget option. The fact that it is wrongly placed on its own online map and that its directions are totally ambiguous does not help either. The only reason I got there was because I stopped at the Hotel Harvest to use their internet. They found a number for the hostel, called them, got directions and then drove me round anyway, once again leaving me feel crushed by Japanese helpfulness. Still, all this ended when the hostel receptionist pased me a folder with a piece of paper explaining that she spoke no English and I should just read this. The place was a converted supermarket, the sign was still in place on the roof. One set of doors were the type of automatic ones that open when they sense your weight on a spot just in front of them. The other types were large metal swing doors with rubber trim - the sort you expect in cold, clinical environments, say, an abattoir.
Everything seemed to operate on coins, of which she had none. In the event of a problem I should call this number... it didn't state what with. The receptionist, having taken pains to explain everything to me in Japanese, finally left. It was me, alone in an old, small supermarket with bunk beds. The common room was placed in that null zone where you have to rearrange your bags and trolley having just packed it all hastily as it was scanned through the till. One side was all windows, open to the car park, leaving me to feel like a zoo exhibit, so I hid in the dorm, which at least had the advantage of a locked door and frosted glass. I consoled myself with the fact I had downloaded It's A Wonderful Life for an emergency evening's entertainment. The "hostel" had wifi, but someone had forgotten to hook it up to internet. I did some exploring. It was like the Shining back there. I had assumed I was alone, so when I pushed open another heavy metal door and found a second dorm with one un-made bed and some abandoned clothes on it I began to get concerned about how I would survive the night. The answer lay with a beer from a neighbouring cafe, It's a Wonderful Life, locking the door, and a melatonin.
The next morning I was out of there on the second train, despite having paid for two nights up front (the minimum booking time demanded by the website). While packing up the bedsheets I noticed one of the furry rugs I had slept under had arm holes - it was as if someone had flayed My Neighbour Torotto. I left the key at the empty desk. My train was arriving, but there is no reason anyone watching my departure would have known this, they would have just seen a backpacker turn and run full pelt down the road with his bags on, leaving the hostel far behind him.
The highest temperature in Nikko that day was zero. It had snowed a few days earlier and there were still patches on the roofs of some of the shrines and temples. It is a Unesco World Heritage sight, but the surprise for me was finding that it has the original "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys
The main temple was of course covered in a light dusting of renovation scaffolding, like Himeji Castle, and the A-bomb dome. I would imagine that normally Japanese guides would be pointing out its red lacquer coating, or at least trying to, given it's not the easiest thing for them to say.
The Capsule Hotel
So I arrived in Tokyo the night before I was expected back at D's. But as I had yet to try a capsule hotel, it seemed that this was my chance. I tracked one down using Starbucks' wifi, but even so I still couldn't make it out in the bright lights of Shinjuku. It's the sort of area where one could more easily receive various services from a woman in a French maid's uniform than find food or accommodation. I had to ask around to find the entrance. At the reception the price was ten euros more than I expected. Apparently it was cheaper if you reserved online.
"Can I still do that for tonight?"
"Yes."
"Is there an internet cafe near here?"
"Yes."
"So if I go down there, reserve and come back up here I can get a bed cheaper?"
Suddenly a special voucher was produced to save me the bother.
Capsule hotels are one of the more space-age aspects of Tokyo. You pay to stay in a pod with a bed, TV and internet (optional extra here). The washing facilities are just an onsen (public bath), so the first thing you do is to put all your clothes into a locker and swap them for the loose pyjama type things in the locker. I made use of the bath and sauna before I headed out into town, and returned several hours later having been plied with drink by a Japanese hedge fund worker, who also seemed a little jaded at the Japanese way of life, or more correctly, way of work. The bed was comfy, yes someone out there was snoring, but it was no worse than a hostel and yes, I did managed to fit inside. I turned the volume right down and flicked on the TV. The choice in the male-only hotel appeared to be porn or adverts. As the morning progressed more wake up alarms went off around the capsules. I hopped down, made another tour of the hot tubs and sauna, bought three bottles of a rehydration drink, delightfully called Pocari Sweat, and hopped on the JR line round to D's place.
