My night in a capsule hotel

This story originally appeared on July 16, 2025 in URBANIA, an online magazine based in Quebec focused on pop culture and society.

Summer struck without warning. Floods, blackouts, lightning ripping through the sky like a B-grade disaster movie—Sunday's weather had an end-of-the-world feel. My one-bedroom apartment, meanwhile, was sweating the humidex through every pore. The air grew heavier, and in a flash, the place had turned into an air fryer, with me in the middle, trapped and crisping up.

So I fled. I left behind my sticky sheets and sought refuge in a climate-controlled cocoon barely bigger than a coffin: a capsule hotel. A tiny oasis of cool air in the heart of downtown Montreal.

A night spent in a drawer from the future may very well be what we now call a getaway. Because in 2025, sleeping anywhere other than your own bed is a logistical puzzle. Hotel rooms, bunk beds in dorms, sketchy Airbnbs or a scrap of carpet in someone’s basement — travelling means pulling off a budgetary gymnastics routine just to afford, essentially, a locker to store your body. A place to hang your clothes, rinse off, close your eyes. End of story? Not quite. First and foremost, you need good Wi-Fi.

Even the most bohemian of youth hostels, once sacred grounds of chance encounters and endless nights, have lost a bit of their magic. I used to believe in them, a lone traveler on noble quests. But since the pandemic, everyone seems to have retreated deeper into their digital shells. The common room has turned into a Wi-Fi bubble, and the wild parties of the past have given way to speed tests and signal hunts.

We don’t seek a change of scenery anymore. We just connect, elsewhere. That’s all.

So if we’re going to live in a bubble, might as well do it in style. Stripping hospitality down to the bare essentials suddenly makes perfect sense. Forget space, opulence, room service, and jacuzzis. All you need now is a single bed, a charging outlet, and Wi-Fi—now considered a vital function.

Well known in Asia, the concept landed in May 2025 on a slightly worn stretch of Saint-Laurent Boulevard. It feels like something between a dormitory and an orbital station.

Born in Osaka in 1979, capsule hotels, or pod hotels, embody minimalism in its purest form, with a hint of retro-futurism. Designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa, the very first of its kind, the Capsule Inn Osaka, addressed a distinctly Japanese need: to offer shelter to businessmen too tired or too drunk to catch the last train. An emergency bed, affordable and discreet.

First off, nothing to complain about when it comes to the front desk service : impeccable. Behind the counter, rows of manga lend a Japanese touch to the decor. As I finish checking in, a European man is already snoring in the capsule suspended just above the lobby.

"One woman stayed here for a whole month," the young receptionist tells me in a conspiratorial tone, like she’s letting me in on a secret.

"You’re in number 24," she adds, handing me a blank card. No name, no number. Just a white rectangle, as if my identity had melted into the system.

I find my home in the prevailing darkness and immediately slam my shin under a ceiling dotted with fake stars. I hang up my little towel, open the safe out of reflex, fumble with the lights like a kid. The bare essentials are here, but it’s cool. Smaller, but already better than my place.

On the sheets, a few suspicious stains… remnants of someone else’s past intimacy. But hey, a capsule hotel also means a certain kind of solitude.

At forty bucks a night, I wasn’t expecting the Ritz anyway. The capsule has no trouble accommodating my six-foot frame. Lying down, my fingers brush the ceiling. The space breathes. Surprisingly, it feels good, even though any claustrophobe would be gasping for air by now.

The comforter, the only sheet provided, feels a bit too thick, even for this air-conditioned summer. So you sweat quietly, trapped in your climate-controlled cocoon.

I’ll skip the part about the mattress and pillow. I used to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere, anytime, like a true adventurer… But is this what aging is? Seeing every new pillow as an insurmountable challenge?

The shared showers and bathrooms are spotless. Clean, with plenty of hot water. No complaints, everything still smells brand new.

The concept, in itself, is well executed. But it almost unwittingly reveals a symptom of our time: individualism as the new norm. Everyone neatly tucked into their numbered cell. No curtains here, just plywood. The communal spirit of dorm rooms has given way to tiny pods launched into a bargain-bin version of Blade Runner. Even the keycard triggers a robotic click when you enter.

Let’s be honest: something hangs in the air. Or rather, nothing. Absolutely nothing. A strange, cold atmosphere. Quiet men who look down, avoiding each other as if simply being here were something to be ashamed of. Nowhere to hang out, grab a drink, kill time listening to reggae. Just a neon-soaked basement filled with machines that dispense earplugs and instant noodles. It’ll take more than two little Buddha statues to make this place feel Zen.

Because there’s something vaguely dystopian about this space, stripped down to technical comfort and sold as convenience. There’s also this resolutely horizontal aspect to it, almost North Korean in feel: no hierarchy of suites, no king-size beds. Here, everyone’s in the same (small) boat. A minimalist equality, born of cold geometry and uniform intention. But behind this well-meaning standardization, there’s still a faint whiff of science fiction in the air.

So yes, while the capsule hotel is full of good intentions, I still had, in classic fashion, a shitty night. Tossing and turning, overthinking my life between bouts of insomnia, woken up by the guy next door slamming his elbow against the wall. And that persistent feeling of being the only one not sleeping. Maybe because I wasn’t far enough from home.

Add to that the snoring, the German morning news, and that constant, low-grade discomfort.

Sleeping in a capsule hotel is, in its own way, an experience. A space still too strange for me, where you float somewhere between reality and a clinical form of dreaminess.

I head to work with a thought opposite to the one I had going in: what’s the point of owning a big house if you spend your days glued to your phone?

Then again… I can’t wait to get back to my little one-bedroom that’s never felt so spacious—even if it sizzles like a broiler between its four walls.

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