Funabashi Grand Sauna and Capsule Hotel - Caters to Men

The capsules were clean and exceptionally well kept, and there’s a small restaurant, smoking rooms, plenty of vending machines, a sauna and other amenities. You can even buy booze from vending machines just outside. The area feels less touristy and more like Japan. Great place, five stars. Just be warned, there are no private showers, so you’ll be showering with everyone else lol.

For a very cheap capsule hotel, it’s pretty reasonable. It’s about a five-minute walk from JR and KEISEI Funabashi station. The building is a little old, but the staff keep it clean inside, and they can hold even large luggage until you leave. There are two types of big hot spring bath, plus free pajamas, towels and Wi-Fi. The layout is: 2F has reception, sauna, bathroom and lockers; 3F has the restaurant, resting area and massage; 4 and 5F have the smoking area and bedrooms. One downside is that some bad customers stay here because it’s cheap, including vulgar, no-moral JP people.

What made this stay for me was the sauna room. It had a large pool, jacuzzi, showers, sauna and a 360-cold shower, all very welcome after climbing Mt. Fuji earlier that day. The capsules were dated, but the sheets were clean, and the cigarette smell throughout the building didn’t seem to get into the capsule itself. There’s no privacy in the bath, so skip it if you’re shy. It’s a weird place, but a cool experience and a real Japanese capsule hotel stay. I wouldn’t want to spend more than one night here. It wasn’t very foreigner friendly. Everything was in Japanese, and staff knew very little English, so Google Translate helped. The place was also hard to find, with no English sign indicating there was a hotel. We arrived very late at night and saw a man relieving himself in the stairwell. He didn’t respond when we called out, so we had to squeeze past him. The man at reception was helpful, but check-in took a while because of the language barrier. After 12:00PM, the same man we’d seen in the stairwell came up and checked into the hotel.

The staff were very friendly and welcoming, which is why I gave it three stars instead of two. The sauna is decent, and it’s good value as a place to stay. But it can get very hot at night because the rooms are poorly ventilated. You may have to sleep with your face near the capsule entrance and leave the curtain open. It’s also very unfriendly to tourists: they require a home address in Japan for check-in. They offer a tourist coupon for a wide range of shops in chiba, but using it means downloading an app that’s only available if your app store is set to Japan. So locals might get something out of those “added benefits,” but foreign visitors can’t.