Book and bed Tokyo review

Book and bed Tokyo Ikebukuro is a novelty experience.

Whenever I’m in Japan, I typically spend my time in capsule hotels when it comes to accomodation. They’re unique to Japan, generally pretty cheap, usually well kept, and with a few hacks, usually the most efficient and painless form of accomodation for solo travellers in Tokyo.

Of course being an avid book reader, when I discovered Book and Bed Tokyo, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sleep in a bookshelf in a library full of books.

It’s everything you’d imagine it to be - very quirky, but charming.

Book and bed Tokyo review - Pat Kay Away

Book and Bed Tokyo have built an entire wall’s worth of bookshelves teeming with books, tastefully styled adornments and capsule spaces for sleep. Hanging out in the lounge area reading a book next to your bed really feels like you’re sleeping in the library. It’s definitely a strange experience, but one that has to be lived to be really known.

As you’d expect from a good capsule-style hotel, everything is clean and well presented. The mixed-dorm bathrooms are big enough to accommodate the entire floor’s worth of guests. There’s all the bits and pieces of a proper hostel here - bins (actually a big deal in Japan since there’s rarely any bins on the street), microwave, coffee machine etc, all arranged in the plywood and concrete-styled common area.

Of course, being a capsule-style hotel, your sleeping area is, well, a small 2x1x2m box. It’s tight. Unfortunately it’s not on the generous side like some other capsule hotels. The bedding is quite thin and hard (even by Japanese standards), and the aesthetics of the bookshelves you’re surrounded by make it difficult to climb into your sleeping hole.

One general hack when sleeping in capsule hotels is to get comfortable with ear plugs, even if you think you don’t need them. From the reviews I’ve read from other people, noise is an issue at night, seeing as they don’t turn the lights off till midnight and the sleeping arrangements are quite close to one another. However in putting ear plugs in for myself, I didn’t have any problems with noise both nights I stayed.

But I mean, you don’t really stay in this kind of place for the sleep - you stay in this place for the ambiance. For the theme. And in that regard, Book and Bed Tokyo is worth an experience if you’re a book lover.

…even if it’s only for a night.