Looking forward to reading this. Walking is truly the best way to discover a city, and even yourself.<p>On a personal experience, when I arrived to Tokyo for a month long vacation in Japan, I had planned going to the Tsukiji Market tuna auctions that first day. It was about 2 in the morning, I had just gotten off a plane, not really tired but the jet lag would kill me for sure, so the plan to counter jet lag would be to not sleep that day and rest the day after and sort of get in sync that way.<p>Now, I don't know how it is now with the new market, but to be able to see the tuna auction you had to be at the market extremely early so, it being 2am seemed a perfect excuse to just walk. I walked for about 2h and when I arrived to the market I found out that day was a holiday in Japan and there would be no auctions that day. Disappointed, tired, I saw on google maps there was an Onsen nearby (around 1h30 away) so I kept walking to Odaiba. The Onsen in question used to be open something like 23h a day which was great for me at 5am.<p>Now that was one hell of a way to relax after that long walk. Never rested that hard in my life.
As an immigrant who walked everywhere where I grew up, this is one of the things I miss the most about living in America. Walkable neighborhoods are rare in most parts of the US, let alone the cities. I wish we had more places to walk. Sigh.
There's a lot to be said about Tokyo and how easy it is to get around on foot and live without a car. It's kind of a surreal dreamscape of unbroken high density urbanity that makes you rethink how large highly functional cities can be.<p>One of the challenges for seeing it on foot though is <i>how effective</i> the public transit is, especially the underground rail systems. You end up seeing islands around transit stations but not the stretches in between. It's totally worth it sometimes to skip the train and just walk the entire way as there's lots of interesting stuff in the "out of the way" bits of the city.
I visited Tokyo in 2019 and went to the top of the Skytree. It was one of the few times in my life where my mind was completely blown. The scale of the city from the viewing point of 450m had me spaced out staring into the distance trying to comprehend the vast scale. If you ever get the opportunity to go I can't recommend it enough, Try going on a clear day about an hour before sunset and watch the city transform. Photos really can't do it justice.
As a european i got into the habbit of walking between popular city neighborhoods to find hidden gems.
I did that in Tokyo,
and that was a really big mistake. I ended up walking next to a huge higway, looking at bland buildings for like 20 minutes, feeling completely lost in the middle of nowhere.<p>I thought about it a lot and came to the conclusion that tokyo wasn't one big city but in fact tenth of small cities linked together.
I spent about a month walking around Tokyo in 2008. I cam before university started and I would just walk around an area and systematically go through all the little alleys and sidestreets. Other people who arrived just before the semester never had time to do the same and never built the same understanding of the city. I had a dumbphone so there wasn't anyway to turn off your brain and just find places to discover through a list.
I'm sure this isn't allowed anymore, but when I went to Tokyo over 10 years ago, me and my friend were just wandering around aimlessly. On a whim we decided to find the tallest building we could and go to the very top floor to see what the city looked like.<p>So, we spotted the tallest tower near us (a totally random and generic office tower), got into the building, and took the elevator to the very top floor to peer out a window.<p>I still remember what the view was like. It was an endless city as far as I could see.
People can also visit and go up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for free in Shinjyuku. A neat view of the city. Walking through Meiji Jinguu is also pretty nice. I like walking from Shinjyuku, through Meiji Jingu and getting to Shibuya (~1h)<p><a href="https://www.yokoso.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/tenbou/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yokoso.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/tenbou/index.html</a>
Yeah, I was getting my Japanese visa and noticed the office wasn't that far from Shinagawa Station, so I decided to walk. Everyone thought it was super-weird I would <i>walk</i> that, where any Tokyo native would take the bus. It was 2km, so, there's a data point on what's considered an excessive walk in Tokyo.<p>But I'm a person who would take a whole Saturday and spend 8hr walking through San Francisco or Seattle or NYC for fun.
This is the first time I came across a "pop-up" newsletter which automatically unsubscribes you after the project is done. What a neat idea. Love it.
How safe is Tokyo really? I ask, because Japan is considered one of the safest countries in the world.<p>However even the first picture (on the right side) shows that windows have bars - probably to secure the building against thieves? How much theft is there in Japan?<p>edit: even more visible bars are on the window on the left side
I've been learning Japanese for a couple decades now, and I've <i>never</i> heard a cafe called a "kissa". Always "kissaten". It feels like the author just make up their own slang for another language, and that doesn't feel good at all.<p>In addition, they wrote a book about visiting a bunch of cafes, and then they're going to leave that book in random other cafes that didn't get put into the book? I can't imagine I'd be very happy about that as a cafe owner. Especially since the book was written by a foreigner (gaijin), and the Japanese still aren't very cool with foreigners, in general. "No gaijin allowed" is still a fairly common sign for some businesses, as I understand it. It seems rather tone deaf.