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Capsule Living

Hiroko Tabuchi in The New York Times:

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

When I read the bit in Neuromancer about Case living in a capsule in a “coffin hotel” in Chiba City I thought it was pretty over the top. The future is already here, it seems, it’s just unevenly distributed.

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