In Tokyo, book lovers can sleep very quiet. In fact, in the japanese capital they can find Book and Bed, the first hostel-library in the world. With more than 1700 books, this fabulous place is perfect to disconnect from the outside world and tune in with yourself.
The amazing opportunity to spend the night sleeping blissfully within thousands of books. That is Book and Bed, a wonderful hostel-library for all book lovers of the world. Designed by a group of architects in the past this hostel-library was a traditional izakaya. Don’t you know what is it? So, let’s start to discover together the secrets of this fantastic place!
Book and Bed Tokyo: the book lover’s dream hotel
What the architects Makoto Tanijiri and Ai Yoshida offer with the entire staff of the Suppose Design Office, which they founded in Hiroshima in 2014, is the first hostel-library where you can literally sleep surrounded by books!
Hostel Book and Bed is in the Ikebukuro area of the bustling city of Tokyo and occupies the seventh and eighth floors of a skyscraper that offers a breath-taking view of the lights of the Japanese metropolis. There are 52 beds available to guests of the hostel, in addition to the different toilets and shared bathrooms while the heart of the structure is the shared space: it is a shared hall where guests can sit on a blue sofa and devote himself to reading.
A place of dreams for book lovers
The hostel with its huge library inside offers the reader a wide range of choices: essays and novels but also magazines, comics, manuals to find work, tour guides and so on. There are 1700 volumes, but this number is destined to increase as the Shibuya book publishing & booksellers intends to increase the catalogue of books up to 3000 volumes.
The question may arise spontaneously about which language these books are written but there is nothing to fear because the Shibuya bookshop has selected volumes in Japanese but also in English to make them accessible to all travellers from the most diverse parts of the world.
A variety of comfortable services for the reading
When you book the hostel you have the choice between two types of berths, all compact, 90 cm x 200 cm and equipped with individual power outlet, reading light and curtain to ensure privacy: “bookshelf” is the type of berth located behind the bookcase, symbol of the hostel and is the one that most concretizes the customer’s idea of resting immersed in the books; to this choice it is opposed a cheaper one, the “bunk” berth.
Book and Bed, a perfect connection with the outside world
To give added value to Book and Bed is its strategic position to take advantage of the various attractions and activities of the city. Located in Ikeburko, one of the most important areas of Tokyo, the hostel provides easy access to most of the city’s must-see attractions. The Sunshine Aquarium is only a 10-minute walk away, and a 16-minute train ride on the Marunouchi Line. You can reach JR Tokyo Station or take about 60 minutes by airport limousine bus or train to reach Haneda Airport. Furthermore, the hostel is a 93-minute Narita Airport via the Narita Express service while the famous entertainment districts of Shinjuku and Shibuya are only 10 minutes away from the hostel on the JR Yamanote Line.
Tradition and sustainable innovation, the ideal mixture
The architects of the Suppose Design Office have therefore redesigned an izakaya, a typical bar frequented by Japanese workers, turning it into a veritable paradise of books moved by the desire to address the entire landscape of contemporary Japanese architecture towards eco-sustainability.
The whole team has succeeded with the Book and Bed to bring together the novelty with sustainable development, to merge the passion for books with the renewal of resources, enclosing everything in a shelter for book lovers, so that they can enjoy their pause from the hustle of the city reading in absolute relax a good book, abandoning the five senses to the smell of wood and the rustle of paper.
Daily prices to stay in the Book and Bed are between 30 and 50 dollars taking obviously account of the time of year when you decide to stay and the bedding you want to adopt.
Author: Francesco Capasso
Cover image: photo by Patrick Tomasso, on Unsplash
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