The Ultimate Guide To Tokyo
Get your yukata and picnic basket ready — here's our guide to festivals both big and small!
Where to buy and sell used bicycles in Tokyo.
Enjoy Tokyo's biggest fireworks festival without breaking a sweat or wrecking your budget.
There's a butcher shop at an open-air market in Bangkok that is invariably fronted by a whole pig's head wearing sunglasses--and when we lived in Thailand, it was imperative that I get to visit it on each and every one of our weekly shopping …
KaraNet 24 is permanently closed. Internet “café” is actually a gross misnomer for this nine-story building in Shibuya, and not only because the Nescafe-in-a-paper-cup from the vending machines is predictably vile, but because it's an …
I wish someone much cooler than myself had told me about Shimokitazawa when I first moved to Japan, because the novelty of Shibuya can wear off mighty quick and there is really only so much gaudy crap you can buy in Harajuku. Music happens in …
The establishment that offers too much is treated with the same suspicion as the one that's lacking, and so much that is both 24-hours and all-you-can-whatever it may be emanates the distinct aroma of the disreputable (think truck stop, love …
Let it be said that this post is motivated ninety-three percent by personal interest--because at Mirror Fashion I found the cheapest denim jackets I've seen in thrift stores in Tokyo, hands down, including this pornographic flannel-lined Levi's …
This venue is now closed, check out the newer Commune Farmers Market which is just a few meters from this old site. Dining al fresco in Tokyo tends to strand you at one or the other end of the value spectrum, that is, either pawning your …
Jimbocho is to books what Akihabara is to electronics, what Kabuki-cho is to sleazy hijinks, what Shibuya crossing is to first-time visitors with videocameras. Welcome to the city with a ward, a district, city block, floor, cell or capsule …
The dress code at restaurants in Akasaka certainly isn’t strictly pearls and diamonds but something tells me that my disintegrating Cons would not be welcome to lunch. Deutsche Bank has its offices in the area, as does a handful of other …
As a middle schooler I dreaded being dragged to another event at the Goethe-Institut in Zimbabwe, where we lived at the time. It was always something-or-another about promoting…culture. In truth, the film screenings were always interesting as …
The cost of seeing releases on the big screen can be daunting--or colloquially, a total rip-off. General admission-slash-extortion at any of the Toho Cinemas locations is 1,800yen, and the college student rates of 1,500yen aren’t much better. …
To each season its traditional stockpiling. Around New Years’, you get the grab bags filled with assorted items and sold at substantial discounts (called fukubukuro—"lucky bag"), the winter bargains, and, of course, the consumerist blowout of …
A rule of thumb: if you’re trying to live cheaply, think like a university student. With a total of 112 universities in greater Tokyo, we figure that there is at least an equivalent number of cafeterias where it is possible to find an …
Praise the powers that be---at least, when it comes to providing cost-friendly sports and exercise facilities. Whereas the handful of ubiquitous private gym chains (Gold’s, Tipness, Konami Club) charge membership fees of 12,000-plus yen per …
Buried on the basement floor beneath three stories of used books, DVDs, CDs, and video games, this outgrowth of the Book-Off Group stores (the “Hard-Off” outlets always strike me as particularly ill-named) is a sartorial bunker. Bingo has a …
Early Sunday evening and the park is a combination of world’s fair, open air auditorium-slash-casting couch, tourist nexus, campground, and cabinet of zoological curiosities. Past the vision of the myriad Elvises at the Harajuku Gate entrance, …
The last time I had short hair it was 1996 and the cut was what’s called “the mushroom”, which is somewhere south of the bowl cut in the hairdo hierarchy. Since then, haircuts for me have been strict trim deals only. In Tokyo, however, having a …
From this room on the third floor you can watch the Yamanote Line turn loop-de-loops and browse used, but beautifully preserved editions of D.H. Lawrence and Jane Austen—315yen, Hesse—525, and Chekhov anthologized for 613. Hardy Boys mysteries …
After playing changing room parkour and handing over upwards of fifty dollars for a cardigan or somesuch, I am often so overwhelmed by the exhausting nature of the exercise, plus residual guilt at trading the month’s phone bill for an …