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Page 18 - Exercise 5

Listening - Capsule hotels

Part A - Listen to Brad describe a “capsule hotel”. Check the words that best describe it.

• Welcome to the program. Your home is my home. Our guest tonight is Brad Phillips from California. Brad, tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do?

• Well at the moment I’m working as an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is an exciting city, but it’s also very spread out, it can sometimes take hours to go from one part of the city to another. When I don’t feel like going all the way home I sometimes stay in a capsule hotel.

• Capsule hotel? Can you explain what that is?

• Yeah, it’s a hotel with lots of small rooms. Actually, they’re not really rooms. There are spaces that are 2 m x 1 m, and only a meter high. In other words they’re very cramped, but the hotel is cheap and very convenient.

• And, what’s inside each little room or should I say each space?

• Well, inside every capsule there’s a bed, a TV.

• A TV? really?

• Yeah, and a reading light, a radio and an alarm clock. The hotel also has lockers where you can keep your personal belongings.

• Interesting. So what kind of people stay in a capsule hotel?

• Well, probably people like me. People who missed the last train home or don’t want to go all the way home only to turn around and come back to work again. It gets pretty busy as you can imagine.

• Finally, would you recommend a capsule hotel to other people?

• Sure, the rooms are small but you get used to sleeping in a small space. I just wouldn’t recommend a capsule hotel to people who can’t relax in small cramped spaces.