The Millennials Kyoto — Hotel in Kyoto

We wanted the experience of a capsule hotel so we stayed here for 3 nights in May 2025. It was definitely an experience! Overall we were comfortable and it felt like a luxury capsule hotel compared to what we had expected/imagined. The lobby area is great. The price is good too unless you're a couple...then you're paying double for two capsules and it's not that much cheaper than a decent hotel. Overall I'd absolutely stay here again if traveling solo. I do wish there were a way to latch the capsule closed to give you a bit more safe feeling at night, but Japan seems safer than where I'm from so maybe that's not actually necessary. I did have one issue with a guy who came near my capsule talking loudly for ~10 minutes two nights in a row, after midnight, but aside from that I can't complain about much. Below is an excerpt from my blog post about the experience that provides some more details:

An elevator to the 8th floor takes you to the lobby, which includes a front desk and lots of relaxing/working spaces. Desks, couches, booths, and a full kitchen provide a great place to hang out and relax and/or socialize if you want to get out of your capsule, but it was time for us to get in.

We located ours just below on the 7th floor, conveniently facing one another. Sliding up the screen revealed a good-sized bed with a wooden shelf above the head. An iPod on the wall provided controls for the fan, lighting, and bed position, which allowed us to configure the bed anywhere between flat and couch-mode. In the latter position, the bed slides back a bit to provide about 18 inches of floor space between the bed and the closed screen so you can stand and have some privacy while changing.

Down the hall were two shared bathrooms. The closer to us was a small hallway with 5 sinks on the right and 5 bathroom doors on the left, complete with the fancy toilets we'd come to expect in Japan. The second bathroom was another long-thin hallway with a stacked washer/dryer and 5 sinks on the left, along with 5 showers on the right. Each shower consisted of a door that led to a tiny room to dress/undress, with a second door revealing a reasonable but small shower. We've certainly had much smaller showers in our travels to Europe, and this one had great water pressure, so we were quite happy with it.

The whole capsule floor was fairly dark and cool, with strict rules for no talking between 8pm and 10am, since the screens certainly don't keep all the noise out. In their fully closed position, they still leave about an inch of space to the floor, and there's not actually any way to latch or lock them shut. I have to admit that part left me feeling a little vulnerable, but also probably relieved some of the possible claustrophobia.

There is a slide out platform below the bed where you can store your luggage - no locks or any protection though. There's also a tiny safe below the bed where you can lock up...

I stayed here March 22-23. Rude front desk staff and hot rooms. Beware of the pretty facade, but it’s not a functional hotel in the sense of sleep comfortability. Common areas/lounge areas and rooftop are great! But let’s be honest, hotels are for sleeping. You can’t control the temperature i. Your room from the iPod, only the lighting and the bed. And there’s no ventilation whatsoever. There’s a little hole in the ceiling. It looks like a surveillance camera, but it’s not. I think it’s supposed to be central A/C, but it blows warm air and the output is really weak. Yikes!

Also, FYI the washing machines will steal your money.

So I put ¥300 in the machine to start a heavy load. The machine takes the ¥300 and is still prompting me for more. I assume (because I’m an American) that it possibly costs more money for a heavy load because that’s how coin laundry works in the states —you pay extra for heavy wash or larger load. It was not until after I put in ¥400 total and the machine was still asking for ¥200 that I read the instruction card on the side of the machine. It said there was only a flat rate of ¥300 for all wash cycles: regular, delicate, and heavy. I went to the front desk to report the faulty machine. I also brought a ¥1000 bill with me to the front desk to request (10) ¥100 coins so that I can use the dryer, after the issue with the washer was resolved. This is a very important fact that I’ll bring up later. So one of the front desk receptionists comes down to the 7th floor with me to inspect the washer. She opens the coin box and hands me ¥100 in my hand. She then takes out ¥200 and puts it in the washer because the display screen is still asking for ¥200 to start the wash cycle. So she returned a total of ¥300 but still owed me ¥100, because I put ¥400 in the machine. When I explained this to her she looked confused. Then she implied I was lying. I said, “You know what? Forget about it!” If I went go the front desk with more money than I needed to wash, why would I lie about ¥100??? So I say to her again, “You still owe me ¥100.” Only then does she begrudgingly give me the remaining ¥100 she owes me but does it like I’m trying to shake her down. The entire experience was very disheartening because although I was visibly irritated, I was still being calm and polite. Before she went back downstairs she asks me for my room number. I told her G13, but I’m confused because what does that have to do with anything? What is she going to put in the notes in my folio —That she doesn’t know how to count? Or she simply didn’t comprehend what I was trying to convey to her? It’s not about the ¥100, it’s about the principle of the matter and how she negatively interacted with me.

Needless to say, I won’t be staying here again! You get what you pay for, and I should have just booked a standard hotel.

Hotel looks nice to the naked eye and is in a prime location, but...

2025 Update:

The projectors are gone (in most cubes, I think, and definitely in mine, though apparently they can rent you one). This was good for me because all I could do was sleep and I needed it. Also the big shade that closes off the cube used to lock but doesn’t anymore, but this is ok and more typical of hostels, so you just take your valuables with you during the day.

Something odd or maybe magical happens in this place because I was actually sleeping. Maybe it’s that there are no lights in the cube and the temperature is good, but I started waking up at 6am every day and then sometimes I’d sleep longer and was probably working off a sleep debt, but I have real issues waking up early so this was kind of amazing. It’s also just a quiet place. I don’t know how to explain that since I’ve been to other cube hotels where people are nosier, so maybe I just got lucky but it was great.

Just wish they had more availability and I’d have stayed longer.

2020 Review: The pros: Great location. Good facilities (the showers are stellar, but the toilets are cramped). Spacious common room. Decent price.

The cons: It feels very corporate. Lots of people here are on some kind of work-away program, so I didn’t meet many tourists/travelers in the common area as compared with a typical hostel.

This may be the most soulless place I stayed in six months in Japan. I stayed for two weeks, with a break in between to spend a weekend in Wakayama. One night I wanted to have the free beer they offer every evening. The man at the desk who I’d seen and dealt with for a week at that point asked to check my phone/key card. He didn’t recognize me. That’s the kind of place this is. And on my second checkout, I was not feeling well and tried to sleep past checkout. There are signs everywhere letting you know that it’s ¥1000 yen/hour to stay past checkout. This was fine with me, but what I didn’t expect is that they would come to my bed and wake me up an hour after checkout. After staying two weeks and given the implied policy, this seemed odd. Either let people pay for more time or don’t, but don’t wake someone up, especially a customer who has stayed with you for two weeks. It’s petty.

Nitpicking: The capsule bed that converts from a bed to a couch is a great idea. In practice, the bed doesn’t convert back to a bed very well (the mattress creeps down when in couch mode and then sticks out into the screen when you make the bed flat again), so I’d have to open the screen and push the mattress back toward that wall when going into sleep mode. Not a big deal, but I think it could probably be fixed. Also some screens work better than others depending on the bed you get. That being said, I thought it was a...