Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room Review

I stayed 4 nights at Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room, a capsule hotel in Matsue, Japan. Matsue is a small town to the north of Hiroshima and is popular as a spa getaway. I got up there on a cheap tourist promo bus ticket and then stayed a little longer because of the good hotel prices and cute town.

This is a review of my stay at Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room in March 2023, plus information about my room, the hotel itself, and other things related to my stay.

Note: I paid for the room myself and have not received compensation from the hotel for writing this review. It’s my own thoughts and experiences and I’ve not been influenced in any way!

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Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room (Matsue, Japan)

Quick Info

Address: 590-3 Asahimachi, Matsue, Shimane 690-0003, Japan
Plus code: F387+4V Matsue, Shimane, Japan
Phone number: +81852220002
Check In: 3:00 pm
Check Out: 10:00 am
Breakfast: Not included, but you can buy it as an add-on.
Wifi: Yes!
Only about a 5 minute walk from Matsue Station, 10 minutes walking to huge Aeon Mall with good supermarket.

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Getting to Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room

If you’re coming up to Matsue on the bus or train, you’ll get dropped off at Matsue Station. Then it’s an easy 5-minute walk to the hotel. The hotel is literally behind the station on the next block, across a major roadway (which has proper pedestrian crosswalks).

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Check-in & Hotel Staff

Check-in was super easy, just the standard “hand over your passport and fill out this form” scenario. The staff didn’t speak much English, but we managed okay with the help of Google Translate.

At the lobby there’s free amenities for guests to pick up, plus tourist pamphlets and even free tea! At the other end of the lobby is the breakfast room which turns into a coworking space after breakfast is over. I think the coworking space had a fee? And the breakfast was also an extra charge, so I skipped it in favor of just getting melon pan pastries from the grocery store.

All guests get a bag with a towel, pajama set, and tooth brush, and these are swapped out EVERY day when housekeeping comes. The free pajamas were a game-changer because it meant having to do less laundry, honestly!

My Room

I stayed in a female capsule dorm which had 24(!) beds in a shared room, plus shared toilet/shower facilities and lockers for storing personal belongings. Normally I hate to stay in anything larger than 10 beds, but capsule hotels in Japan are typically quiet because it’s not tourists in there, it’s business people who just want to sleep.

I really liked the locker system. It was totally outside of the dorm room, so if someone needed to dig through their suitcase at midnight it didn’t disturb anybody else.

Lockers which used our room key for the locks

There was also a place to lock your huge backpack/suitcase to a rail for security, too.

This dorm also had a huge shared lounge with vanities! Also a few comfortable chairs, a hot water kettle, and some side tables that I repurposed into a laptop desk.

In the hallway outside of the dorm there was a large countertop with stools and a microwave, which I used to make quick dinners.

Bed

Cubic bed. There’s a “door” that pulls down from the top, like a window shade.

If you’ve never stayed in a capsule before, they do look weirdly claustrophobic. But honestly they’re just bunk beds with walls, and I personally find them to be cozy.

The capsules in this hotel were a bit difficult to get into because you had to crawl in from the bottom, but inside was actually a fairly big bed. Maybe slightly larger than single size?

Inside the capsule was a plug, a light, and a small ledge to put your phone and glasses on.

The mattress was VERY firm. Also unfortunately like many capsule it got very stuffy in there. The hot air combined with the thick duvet made for very sweaty sleeping. I ended up using the duvet as a kind of mattress topper and then using a sleep sack for a blanket instead.

Bathroom

The shared bathroom was VERY nice. The toilets were separate from the showers (yay) and the showers were always clean. Plenty of hot water as well, and good water pressure.

The amenities were AMAZING: the full range of shower stuff including two kinds of conditioner, plus basically anything you could want in the sink area. Cotton buds, toner, two kinds of face wash, hair dryer, brushes, toothbrushes: a lot!

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Hotel Room Tour Video

If you prefer video, I did a room tour when I first checked in:

Shared Spaces

Besides the shared spaces inside the female dorm area, there were others within the hotel itself. There’s a shared lounge with tables and microwaves (shown above), and the breakfast space was open to guests afterwards to use as a coworking space.

There was also a laundry room, which I used successfully after Google Translating the instructions. The nice thing about public Japanese washing machines is they always come with soap already, so you don’t have to buy more!

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed staying at Matsue Urban Hotel Cubic Room! Besides the firm mattress, it was a very comfortable hotel with a lot of great amenities, and its proximity to the train station and a grocery store made it easy to both go out sightseeing and get cheap food for myself at night.