accomodations

I'm travelling tomorrow so I'll be staying at a hotel. Necessary evil; I usually feel disturbingly disoriented whenever I wake up in an unfamiliar locale. Which of course is kinda weird considering how corporate cookie-cutter all hotel rooms are these days.

I really do feel spoiled and coddled these days though. Six short years ago when I was a salaryman working in Tokyo, my accomodations were different from what they are now when I travel. You have to understand the context first. In Tokyo, drinking, most often heavy drinking, is an integral part of business. Men my dad's age would be vomiting down their 3 piece suit and no one would give them a second glance (unless of course, he was doing so on your shoes). Like trained athletes, younger revelers will steady themselves on the railings, find their zone, and open the floodgates of still-cold beer.

At any rate, this leads to many missed trains and the need to find cheap housing. You don't want to shell out $100 for a hotel room, nor does spending $200 on a cab ride home appeal to you. What to do? Well, stay in a capsule hotel of course! It's totally sci-fi (picture those hibernation units from the Aliens movies) in a industrial-organic way. You get your own locker and your own little cubby-hole to call home for a night. The keys are on rubber wrist-bands so you don't accidentally leave it somehwhere or flush it down the toilet. And let me tell you, one has not lived until waking up to the sound of a bunch of hung-over salarymen hawking their way through a juicy phlegm buildup.

And folks ask why I enjoy being back in the USA.