un, you’re in Tokyo and don’t stop running. There’s more life in Tokyo than you have left in you. With 256 bars crammed into the tiny area known as Golden Gai, you could probably spend 100 years getting sloshed in each city bar and never visit them all, not to mention restaurants.
Tokyo is not one city, but many.
Tokyo isn’t just Tokyo – it’s a series of culturally different villages geographically glued together – when wandering from one neighborhood to the next everything begins to subtly change – each village has its own heart and unique character shown through the shops, bars, art and people on the street. Shibuya is a fever of activity containing the busiest crossing on planet earth. Harajuku and the fashionista cosplay artists paying homage to the fantastic subculture fashion. Or Shinjuku’s decadent mix of red light district, love hotels, Piss Alley and gentleman’s clubs. Cursed Roppongi with its decades-old reputation for clubbing, Ikebukuro with its female anime shops and department stores, and Ginza for the upscale shopping for the worshipers of name brands – and even more.
Yup, that’s me – sitting on the Robot’s lap. (sigh)
Cute is everywhere in Tokyo
Good to know that all naughty toys are tax-free in Tokyo… hrm.
Don’t touch this baby’s nose – even if you want to…
Yummy crepes, is this Paris?
Tourist ‘trap’ – get it? 😉
When it comes to Tokyo, forget the guidebook. What they promote as ‘must-sees’ are often trumped-up mundanity. They’ll point you towards the Robot show, have you petting the dog statue in Shibuya Station (Hachikō), visiting the Godzilla head in Shinjuku, eating at the Monster Café, chasing down a sushi boat restaurant and then looking for the Astro Boy mural. “Polish off your stay in an authentic Ryokan,” they’ll say – “for the perfect Tokyo experience.”
Just don’t. The Robot Show is a garish tourist trap, Hachikō is a nice story but not worth a specific trip, Godzilla head is shopping gimmick, and the Monster Café looks like every crayon in the 128 crayon box vomited at once – It’s more about overpriced, sugar-glazed, under-yummy food than monsters. The Astro Boy mosaic is a small (1 meter) and stuck to the bottom of a bridge. Finally – a Ryokan in Tokyo is more akin to a capsule hotel unless you break out the gold bars.
For the most part, their suggestions, just pinpoint on a map you end up chasing around to tag and say you saw them, but by racing to tick them off and create the ideal day you somehow end up missing Tokyo – It’s an exercise in futility.
Monster Cafe got no monsters (Huhuhu) just plastic fantastic
Less is more fun
Sometimes (weirdly) – it’s better to have less information. To find, then pin the best speakeasy bars (if that’s your kink) into a google map, and book your hotel close to that. A basic understanding of what each neighborhood (or district) offers and then just go explore. Instagram is another good source for visually seeing what’s out there, then bookmark places you find interesting and add them to your map.
I’m comfortable giving this advice cause I did pretty much everything wrong – following the guidebook like the holy grail. Until, eventually I threw my hands up – and started slowing down, just checking out what was in the 10 blocks around my neighborhood. Not all of Tokyo is LED billboards, neon and robot nation. In each neighborhood, there’s a more subtle village, primarily for Japanese, but often they will welcome you in.
Japanese monster liquor…
Climbing down stairs somewhere in Golden Gai
Speakeasy bars are all around Tokyo – if you can find them
The accidental tourist
The Tokyo I ended up enjoying was mostly found in the smaller lanes and side-streets. Closed doors with discreet names that often open into splendid cocktail bars that may only have a single bartender artfully preparing unique drinks. Or – on the other end of the scale: Piss alley where you sit half-in and half-out of the tiny diorama restaurants feasting on grilled meat from who knows what, or who cares because it’s delicious. The Raman noodle shop suggested by the Ryokan owner, or Golden Gai with it’s tremendous amount of sticker art plastering the even more tremendous number of tiny watering holes where you and 13 other people can pass the night in a space no bigger than a walk-in-closet getting deliriously drunk, miss the last train and grab a taxi home.
If you’re ever on a small side-street, see a nice door and maybe an empty bottle of Sake outside, my humble advice is to try the door – you never know what you might find.
Lavender and absinthe ice cubes
Shinjuku – blood on the streets?
Follow that dream
Or, of course – you’re free to chase that neon dream and just go crazy. Track down that one perfect Ramen Noodle place, see all the sights and feel you got your money’s worth. To me, that just got a little exhausting. Everyone is after the ‘authentic experience’ – I’m not sure what that means in a city as complicated as Tokyo. There is no ‘authentic’ as a foreigner, so it’s sometimes better to focus on having unique, or memorable experiences. The robot show will never offer that, a bespoke bar full of stormtrooper statues where the bartender carefully shaves the ice block and infuses your drink with cherry blossom smoke… candy for the brain and something you can bring home with you.
Masks on the street
Focusing on the village
Piss Alley (Memory Lane)
Weirdly, not the place to get pissed, or piss. It got its name in the 1940s when the tiny maze of streets offered a plethora of illegal drinking establishments, hostess bars, and no restrooms. The patrons would head over to the train tracks and relive themselves. Thus the name. Now there are restrooms (thanks!) and the same small beautiful alleys offer near-endless yakitori grilled meat. No fancy cocktails this is a place for beer and basic booze.
Chicken balls with egg floating on soy sauce?
Golden Gai
Another narrow warren of shack-like structures just on the other side of the bridge from Piss Alley, this, however, IS the place to get pissed. With hundreds of small bars (some of them 2 stories), it’s an organized grid layout of lanes that somehow still feels chaotic and different every time you return. I’d take simple nights drinking in Golden Gai over any club Roponggi had to offer – and it won’t make your pocket cry.
Another little bar in Golden Gai – full of booze and party
Love Hotel spotting
Who doesn’t want to sleep in a Hello Kitty themed love nest, sit in a giant clear champagne glass that doubles as a tub, a victorian era room, a hospital room equipped with authentic cast iron beds and an examination table, a classroom with desks, a chalkboard and bell or your own carousel of horses to spin around on. Whenever you spot a love hotel, feel free to go inside and take a look at what they offer. Many have touch screens you can view the different rooms and it’s all about privacy.
Motto for a love hotel?
Hunting Sticker art
Sticker art is a passion, sometimes just blatant advertisements, other times unfathomable little works of art. Most stickers are so sticky there’s no chance of removing them (In Kyoto the municipality regularly scrapes them off leaving a landscape of gnarled glue). There’s absolutely no reason for them, but there they are, on light posts, electrical boxes, walls, doors, everywhere a sticker can be stuck. Always fascinating to find new art, even more, pleasurable to find an artist you already know. Not to mention murals and street art. Tokyo if full of people all with something to say, and they do it on these tiny 4×4 stickers.
Sticker art in Harajuku
Harajuku fashion
The center of the universe of Tokyo teen fashion and everything cosplay, cute and cool. Harajuku came to be in the postwar era and arrival of American expats who claimed the area and brought along a desire for import shops. Japanese teenagers interested in fashion from ‘gaikoku’ (abroad) started to flock to the weird and every clever Takeshita Dori. Now you can walk down the street and ogle the runway of Japanese gothic lolitas or shop until your sequins fall off.
Girl dressed up for a romp along the Takeshita Dori
7. Tips
Tokyo is a thousand things and you can visit it a thousand ways – all I can do is offer up a few tips from my own visit.
