Tube Parking

I had heard of tube hotels in Japan but had never seen one. Curious, I followed a sign and entered, asking the manager if I could see the accommodations. He didn’t catch my drift at first, but with enough pointing to my eyes and to the stairway, he agreed and led the way. On the second floor were communal washing facilities to one side; to the other was a honeycomb of tubes.

I expected something along the lines of a submarine torpedo tube. These were actually much larger and considerably less military, complete with a thin mattress and a TV at the end of the space. The height allowed one to sit up, though I didn’t expect to see anyone stretching along with aerobics videos. The front “door” was a small curtained affair that didn’t seem much for preventing noise or protecting privacy. Was I expecting something else for less than thirty bucks in one of the most expensive cities on the globe?

This was not dissimilar from the crowded bunks of youth hostels around the world, with one exception. Could I deal with the claustrophobia? My mind served up terrifying images of childhood when my siblings and I would roll each other up in a rug, testing ourselves to see how long we could stay thusly entombed. I didn’t break any records then and wouldn’t expect to now. I concluded that I could probably handle one of these more comfortable abodes. The lack of a fixed door and promise of ready escape would calm my sense of entrapment.

The question remained of where to stash my luggage and my laptop. The cubbies in the bath area weren’t made for that. Maybe they had storage downstairs, not that I was concerned about theft. Tokyo just didn’t seem the place for it, even though traveling foreigners weren’t bound by Japanese customs and I’d be surrounded by them. In any case, I could just leave my gear with the Bell Captain at the Grand Palace for a night. Perhaps on my last night in Tokyo I would come down here, relatively stripped of accoutrements, and add tube-hosteling to my list of experiences. I thanked my host, descended the stairs and walked out and into the neon nightshow of Shibuya.