For me, even the second time, staying in a capsule hotel was a pleasant novelty. However, if I had a family waiting at home and had to stay there fairly often, the thrill would wear off in a hurry. Still, if you're a Japanese company employee who is consumed by ambition, it's nice to know that such places are available. They make it possible to work loads of overtime, and to do plenty of after-hours politicking while drinking with the boys. If you want to make it to the top, you'll stay in a few capsule hotels on the way up.
Few women make it to the top.
The Daily Yomiuri recently reported that there are 40,111 executives in publicly traded Japanese companies, and that just 99 of them are women. This works out to 0.25 percent, a negligible improvement over the 0.19 figure of two years ago. Of those 99 women, nearly a third were the founders of their own companies, or the family members of founders. In other words, these women had the gumption create jobs for themselves, but they are not people who were promoted because someone else recognized their value. Of the remainder, an undisclosed number were lawyers or accountants who actually worked as independent contractors for the companies that listed them.