Vancouver Would Be Cooler If is a column that advocates for things that exist in other cities that could, in one way or another, serve to improve life in our own. Archive here.

(via) I just returned from a couple of weeks in Tokyo where I stayed in a few different “capsule” hotels. These are those hostel-like accommodations where guests sleep in tiny individual pods with very little in the way of noise-proofing. They are great for people traveling alone who plan on spending very little time in their hotels. They’re also dirt cheap (mine cost $30 to $50 per night). Of course there are the obvious downsides, especially for those who lean toward the claustrophobic, but it would be good for our visitors to have a low cost alternative to a hotel stay or an Airbnb that is taking away from our housing stock.

Anyway, it got me thinking this morning how cool it would be if Vancouver had one or two of them, especially one similar to the new C capsule hotel in Tokyo, which combines micro-lodgings with sauna amenities. Visitors could sweat it out in 90? steam baths, ladling mint-scented water on hot rocks, and then bring their body temperatures down under pillar showers of varying temperatures. The 24 hour facility has 102 rooms for men and 60 for women as well as gender-specific saunas. Take a look: