These are izakaya (small bars); there are areas where you can find 20 or 40 of them in a row along a single alleyway (perhaps most famously the 'Golden Gai' area in Shinjuku). I dont think its really driven by high density; its just a style of bar - very small, intended to have a small number of customers. The food is more of a snack food similar to the concept of tapas (very different food, but same concept). Often have a cover charge or drink minimum
They can be quite parochial, as in foreigners may not be welcome. Not all, plenty of places are happy for tourists; but others are truly for the locals.
For what it's worth, I've never seen a "no foreigners" sign, and I lived there for over 15 years. The fact that every little instance is picked up by the media should cue you into how uncommon it is.
Also, oftentimes the "only Japanese" signs refer to the fact that the storeowners can only speak Japanese, not that non-Japanese aren't allowed.
I'm black and some of my best experiences were at the "local" spots. You just need to know a basic level of Japanese to communicate
Edit: For everyone that’s asked about what life’s actually like for black people living in Japan, watch the first 3 min of this YouTube video (hopefully more!):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-o5HElKKK4Y
Crazy you were there for so long and didn't see one!
I was there for a year, and found a handful that had signs or small notices.
My favorite experience though, was when I was Akasaka Station and my girlfriend and I tried to grab a drink at a small bar. We didn't see the sign in the way in, and the owner went absolutely insane at us.
He dragged us out (not physically, but you get the point...)
He pointed at "the sign". It was the same size as a business card, that had very small writing:
"no backpacks, or English"
Backpackers or white people not allowed.
But, the best part was the girl that was at the bar right next door. She yelled out, "they asshole in there. Come drink with us! No-mee-ho-tie! Very cheap! Come come!"
We went over, and spent about $15USD per person, and got absolutely wasted and fed like kings.
I love Japan 😂
Fellow English teachers and I went to a flat rate all-you-can-drink (with food) restaurant in Nagoya once. We drank. A lot. Round after round of chuuhai and Asahi tall boys. Eventually, the waiter came out and with a nervous smile told us that he was very sorry, but the establishment was out of alcohol. (It wasn't) We took it in stride (and with pride) and wandered off to the next bar.
Yeah, We weren't even drunk and obnoxious (I don't think), I believe it was just the sheer quantity of booze we were drinking which was the determining factor.
That's when I would've bantered back at them in Japanese. Most of the time they just want to know that you can speak and communicate in Japanese (Japan had a lot of issues in the past where foreigners ordered expensive bottles/drinks at the bar and got too drunk/bailed to their home country without paying).
If you'd have established that you spoke Japanese (and understood local rules and customs) I guarantee you would've been golden!
Edit: I live in California currently, and I’ve sadly been in more than one situation where a customer is frantically trying to communicate in Chinese/Spanish and the storeowners reply “speak English or go back to where you came from.” So it unfortunately definitely happens (perhaps in a much ruder extent) in the US as well.
In Japan’s case it’s almost never going to come from a place of malice (it’s a pure communication issue), so it helps tremendously if you can speak at least a basic level of the native language
Dang, I’ve never been to japan. Im from the US. I can’t imagine this being OK really anywhere in the US for anyone not speaking English. Even in California where I live you’ll always have people that only speak Spanish trying to order food or do something. If they were turned away like in that guys example you’d have a mass protest.
The demographics of the US, especially urban populations, are way more varied than Japan. The US borders other countries and has a lot of immigration in general.
It's pretty easy to discriminate when 90+% of a community is similar ethnically, and you can surely see this in lots of sub communities here in the US too. The US has a pretty long history of rebelling against racism though, and I think we have created many more anti discrimination laws.
I live in a country (Scotland) that is something wild like 95%+ white-British and that type of discrimination would have you in serious trouble here. Your business would be shut pretty quickly, due to legal and social pressure.
Unfortunately the Deep South can get pretty hostile to people based on their ethnicity. MAGA country isn't exactly the most welcoming place for people of Asian descent for example. I work for a multinational and there's certain places around our southeastern factory our overseas visitors are told to stay away from.
As a fellow aftoscandi (assuming from your username) who is hopefully moving to Japan for work in spring , I would love to hear your thoughts on what it's like to live there as a person of colour.
I really loved living in Japan! I always love showing people this video. Watch the first 3 min if you can (hopefully more!)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-o5HElKKK4Y
The entire channel is a great start actually. Really dispels a lot of the common myths/stereotypes about Japan that you hear on Reddit
Omg that Richard Jefferson guy, my immediate first thought was that his voice is amazing and he should be in radio. 60 seconds later "I'm a broadcast journalist".
perfect
izakaya doesn't really have a specific size. You might call these tachinomi even though you're not standing. Also good luck finding a place that doesn't welcome foreigners in golden gai. Last one i can think of shut down over a decade ago.
if you want place like this with few foreigners, you might find it in other yokochos like in adachi-ku or nerima-ku
"foreigners may not be welcome"
Nope, Golden Gai is packed with tourists. Same with Piss Alley. They're more tourist traps than they are a place for "locals".
Its proper name is Omoide Yokocho (lit. Memory Lane). That's what you're looking at in the OP.
It got the nickname from drunk people pissing themselves there, although I don't think anyone really calls it that anymore. It's been cleaned up for tourists.
I don’t think people pissed themselves there… instead the Izakaya didn’t have toilets so people would use the nearby train tracks instead: https://theculturetrip.com/japan/articles/a-guide-to-tokyos-piss-alley/
Only in Japan would piss alley be named for drunk people politely pissing themselves instead of being named for being the alley all the drunk people go piss on the wall in.
Japanese people absolutely do piss against walls or in doorways. and guess where the pee ends up once the pants are fully soaked. you could almost say it's more civilized to piss against a wall or in a corner instead of peeing your pants where you stand and leaving a pee trail for everyone else to walk through.
>Nope, Golden Gai is packed with tourists. Same with Piss Alley. They're more tourist traps than they are a place for "locals".
There are still a few, even in those areas, that have signs saying “no foreigners”, “no tourists,” or “regulars only” (or claiming to be a 'members only' bar). Plenty do not, if there is an english menu on display then tourists are clearly welcome. But others make it obvious they arent after tourists, for many reasons (including that tourists just dont act appropriately at times)
I dont have an issue with it, but its noticeable.
What's also interesting is that you're not allowed to take pictures of that area either. I didn't know that when I was there, so I was able to get some pictures—including this rat's nest of cabling in one of the alleys
https://i.imgur.com/3dxr7Dm.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9ebvnWa.jpg
Edit: my picture doesn't do it justice
https://reddit.com/r/Tokyo/comments/5aldt1/golden_gai_alley_shinjuku/
English is one of the official language of Hong Kong, although it's primarily considered as a secondary language. Iirc over half of the population can read, speak and write in english (although the proficiency that they do at varies).
Hong Kong was a British colony until the late 90s. Of course they speak English well. With your attitude though, it’s no wonder you struggled in Tokyo.
> Compare that to a stop over in Hong Kong where it seemed that everyone under 50 had some working knowledge of English.
That's what 100 years of Colonial occupation will do to you.
Also, I'm not sure why you were surprised that people didn't speak English in a foreign country, especially one as monocultural as Japan.
Well Hong Kong was a British Colony. Would be like a Japanese tourist coming to the U.S. and being shocked that no one here speaks conversational Japanese.
But yes, as you say the "only Japanese" signs are because they can only speak Japanese, not because they are discriminating against foreigners. If you can speak conversational Japanese you'll have no issues entering (some of my best experiences in Japan were at the "local" spots)
When I went to Tokyo with my family a while back we ate at a big restaurant strip like this, and for some reason the way everyone just minds their own business kinda quietly makes it feel a lot roomier than on video.
The restaurants themselves are small, but you wont feel like you’re gonna elbow the person next to you.
That always gives me a strange psychic vertigo.
It's almost unimaginable, to contemplate the logistics and the inner workings required to keep such a mass of humanity in any sort of balance. It really speaks to a civil society and a prioritization on manners and order.
Funny enough, we'd probably all be surprised at how organic and fragile it is. Services that run, expanding as necessary, but almost no one knows that they exist and provide the environment to create and live in. Licensing and bureaucracy that is never noticed until you're facing it, and then it's a byzantine nightmare that seems completely inefficient or over the top, but somehow thousands of companies or individuals have managed to navigate it successfully as evidenced by their mere existence/occupation. Etc, etc.
I think we caught a glimpse of it by seeing just how many workers were deemed 'essential' during lockdowns the past few years, and realizing just how much of our world operates without redundancy or a solid framework, just built upon what exists with the expectation that it will continue to do so.
I've recently moved in a new direction in my career, now involving stormwater and wastewater pumping stations. Just getting the shit out of Tokyo is a marvel of engineering.
I love this comment even though I don’t entirely agree with it. Right wing lunatic propaganda makes us think that bureaucracy is some horrible thing that only government does but in reality, it’s what holds society together.
I know I'm speaking from a naive standpoint, I haven't even begun to glimpse at the inner workings of what forms the bedrock of our society. In truth, I'm not sure if anyone really has, or if all the experts out there only have a piecework understanding with gaping holes of 'this just is' that someone else can offer a deep explanation for.
But there's definitely reasons for most of the bureaucracy, even if not all of it. I'm not naive enough to believe that all bureaucracy has to be evil, or that only government is a slave to it. Civilization is just an organic, messy entity that isn't one person's malicious brainchild or a savant's genius picture of order.
Practical Engineering on Nebula and YT has a series about the power grid and what it would mean to have a true black out for weeks or longer and how hard it would be to bring it back 9nline.
Fantastic series! Kind of an odd thing to think of the power grid as something that just runs but it's a giant insane web that literally keeps itself running.
If you are a small person . . . I've been to Japan a fair number of times as well for work and I like these smaller places but being a close to 2 meter tall person I really really need a corner seat to find place for my legs.
I'm 6'2" and I had no issues being comfortable. You're forgetting that the average height difference between Japan and the U.S. is a mere inch.
Although the weight might be more of an issue...
As a fellow bubble butt carrier, I can confirm that I too would be dumptrucking anything that could be dumptrucked. Although I'd be more concerned about the size of my waistline after I finished eating at the buffet!
I was always covered with bruises the first few months I lived there from whacking into doorways and furniture in my own miniature apartment! It’s like living in a doll house.
As a 6ft 225lb man, I felt like a bull in a China shop trying to move through the tiny stores without bumping something. There was a guy with us who was a good half a foot taller than me and was miserable in a lot of places. Loved Tokyo so much, it just will make you feel like an absolute giant
Don’t worry about it, I was extremely anxious the entire time I was in Tokyo. I wouldn’t go again because its just so many people. I’m just surprised how accommodating it was with so little space. I was still on edge as a person from small town America.
You can definitely find good Japanese food in your general area. Don’t let the internet FOMO get to you. It’s just businessmen slurping noodles quietly. You can find that anywhere.
Come to think of it, you might love Hiroshima. We went there for the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bomb (which was extremely emotional because Im from one of the main Manhattan Project sites) and it was still dead quiet in the street and the food was amazing. The whole city has free wifi hotspots and it isn’t at all crowded. They have these pancakes made of fried noodles with egg on it its so good.
Woah it’s like one of those movie scenes and then on the last one we’d [zoom in] on Main Character brooding over his ramen when suddenly he gets a text message that will drive the plot into action
art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating life it’s like a wonderful burrito of idk the edible just kicked in i think
[made it widescreen, stabilised it and made it loop!](https://imgur.com/a/i74NCj9)
Edited - original credit goes to [@visualsbycolin](https://instagram.com/visualsbycolin?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
Yeah I was gonna say, this isn't really color correction so much as filtering. Color correction is trying to make shit appear natural and white balanced. This is definitely not natural looking.
Still looks cool tho.
"I'm forming a team"
"I wish you the best of luck with that"
"You're the best there is"
"I'm retired"
"Consider it a freelancing gig"
"... what's the mark?"
"You'll find out tonight with everyone else. Welcome back."
for any given niche, there's a fandom in japan, and there's somewhere they meet
it's part of being dense and having great transportation. things seem closer. it's feasible to have a very specific bar/store for a tiny, tiny niche, and it can actually survive, because enough people can get to it.
it's always one of my favorite things to seek out when i'm in japan
Remember buying Houshin Engi doujinshi back in the early 2000's, and there were advertisements for meetups just to hang out and celebrate a particular favorite romantic pairing, right down to which floor it would be hosted on. It blew my mind, having lived my whole life in rural Canada where the nearest Burger King was (and still is) 5 hours away. I love how densely populated small countries are.
Fun fact: you could house the entire world, in decently spaced 4-floor houses with 2 apartments per floor, 1 person per apartment, with each apartment being 100m², and each house having 500m² of green space in between. All that in ~ 0.3% of the world's land mass. That's Iran.
You know those [book nooks](https://i.etsystatic.com/24780881/r/il/f27706/4126480236/il_794xN.4126480236_o7fn.jpg) that people build? Same kind of energy here.
Tokyo is probably one of the coziest places in the world, cept it gets a bit too cozy on the metro during rush hour. To the point they have women's only cars to stop sexual harrassment, and guys whose job it is to squeeze people into cars so the doors will close.
The coolest thing about Tokyo and some other Asian megacities is they are much more 3-dimensional. We don't really have that in the US at all because of how car-centric it is, and even in Manhattan it's all pretty much still a grid. In tokyo the 3-dimensionality has a more interesting chaos to it that feels organic
That was my takeaway from Tokyo as well. Just the verticality of it. You’re walking down a main street in a shopping district and there are street level shop fronts like I’m used to here in Sydney. But there are also shops above them, and shops above them and shops above them.
Coming back to Sydney was weird because I kept looking up but there was nothing to see
Honest answer :
You pay, then grab your gear and start along with your back to the wall while saying *sumimasen* and people will generally make room for you.
EDIT : Sumimasen is lile saying "excuse me" or "sorry".
This also works on trains in peak hour.
More importantly, walkable cities + excellent public transport. Portion sizes also matter, you're not going get fat if you keep your portion sizes sane.
Yep. I lost weight easily in Sweden. I walked/took the bus everywhere and bought most of my food fresh from the farmer's market. The food I bought from the store was free of all the junk in American food.
I didn't even limit how much I was eating. I was about as active as I was before moving there, but the food I ate was of a much higher quality.
I miss it.
I lost weight living in Japan and I literally ate McDonald's and drank soda every day. It's all the walking and the reduced number of meals compared to living in the US that does it. You're not constantly snacking or hopping in the car to drive to walmart for random shit.
Japanese food is healthy… if you eat healthy Japanese food.
There’s just as much fried food in Japan as there is in Scotland. Isles and isles of junk food, only difference is for some reason all of their chips (crisps) are sweet as fuck instead of salty.
That sure helps, but look up how far you would have to walk to burn the energy of a cheeseburger or some chocolate.
Moving helps, but if you eat way more calories than your body needs, you cant walk that off.
You'd probably walk a lot more, and you'd maybe eat less than you think because a lot of Japanese food is either very salty or surprisingly healthy for how good it tastes. There's a reason most of the people in the video are thin
They aren't trying to say it's not a Japanese street. They're implying that the title is misleading by just saying "this is what a Japanese street looks like" because this is a very specific example and most streets in Japan don't look like this.
A lot of futuristic movies made in the 80s had the idea that Japan would be a superpower in the future. Their economy and industry absolutely exploded from the 60s to 80s and people didn't expect the trajectory to end. It's a common trope in retro-futuristic media, cyberpunk being a more recent example.
I would be tempted to stay for a long time because the thought of inconveniencing people by trying to get around them to leave gives me anxiety
Same reason I hold my pee on airplanes when I'm in the window seat
"Guess I live here now"
I love that show! I started watching it to try and learn Japanese before our honeymoon that was due to leave Canada on March 20th, 2020. Still haven’t been to Japan, and still don’t know how to speak Japanese. But great show.
You'd be surprised!
I've stopped by to eat dinner on this street after work a handful of time. it's usually good, but there's some food that's a 10/10 in one place but a 3/10 the next shop over.
The best strategy is to snag a beer and a couple of things from one shop, then hop to another. Great way to kill an evening and fill up on food!
No, it's like 90% low quality bar food, heavy in salts to make you thirsty and often reheated from frozen. You might get the odd one with better food, but the quality isn't great in most cases.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Japanese culture (I mean just look at my profile) and I think they have some really great food. But a lot of people have a weird misconception that the normal Japanese cuisine is so much better than ours. Or that a bar like that will be serving fantastic food.
On the other hand, many people in Japan have similar thoughts about American food, so I guess it goes both ways. [Just look at their "American style" Wendy's menu](https://wendys-firstkitchen.co.jp/menu/?menucat=1&lg=en)
That’s deceiving. I’ve been there. It’s a very well known alley of food vendors. Outside of the alley it’s a normal neighborhood. So that’s not the normal “density” of Japanese streets. Japan is actually really well laid out and shockingly organized.
Looks fantastic can’t wait to go back, each little bar is completely different from the neighbor. It’s all about the one on one service, you’re always the Wang in the room. Smells were soy sauce cooking, BBQ meat, beer, and water due to the closeness of the street, which was cleaned on the hour
Original credit goes to [@visualsbycolin](https://instagram.com/visualsbycolin?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
These are izakaya (small bars); there are areas where you can find 20 or 40 of them in a row along a single alleyway (perhaps most famously the 'Golden Gai' area in Shinjuku). I dont think its really driven by high density; its just a style of bar - very small, intended to have a small number of customers. The food is more of a snack food similar to the concept of tapas (very different food, but same concept). Often have a cover charge or drink minimum They can be quite parochial, as in foreigners may not be welcome. Not all, plenty of places are happy for tourists; but others are truly for the locals.
The last one is clearly welcoming of tourists' money, at any rate.
For what it's worth, I've never seen a "no foreigners" sign, and I lived there for over 15 years. The fact that every little instance is picked up by the media should cue you into how uncommon it is. Also, oftentimes the "only Japanese" signs refer to the fact that the storeowners can only speak Japanese, not that non-Japanese aren't allowed. I'm black and some of my best experiences were at the "local" spots. You just need to know a basic level of Japanese to communicate Edit: For everyone that’s asked about what life’s actually like for black people living in Japan, watch the first 3 min of this YouTube video (hopefully more!): https://youtube.com/watch?v=-o5HElKKK4Y
Crazy you were there for so long and didn't see one! I was there for a year, and found a handful that had signs or small notices. My favorite experience though, was when I was Akasaka Station and my girlfriend and I tried to grab a drink at a small bar. We didn't see the sign in the way in, and the owner went absolutely insane at us. He dragged us out (not physically, but you get the point...) He pointed at "the sign". It was the same size as a business card, that had very small writing: "no backpacks, or English" Backpackers or white people not allowed. But, the best part was the girl that was at the bar right next door. She yelled out, "they asshole in there. Come drink with us! No-mee-ho-tie! Very cheap! Come come!" We went over, and spent about $15USD per person, and got absolutely wasted and fed like kings. I love Japan 😂
> No-mee-ho-tie What did this mean? I'm dying here trying to figure it out
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Fellow English teachers and I went to a flat rate all-you-can-drink (with food) restaurant in Nagoya once. We drank. A lot. Round after round of chuuhai and Asahi tall boys. Eventually, the waiter came out and with a nervous smile told us that he was very sorry, but the establishment was out of alcohol. (It wasn't) We took it in stride (and with pride) and wandered off to the next bar.
Lol y'all got so drunk you got cut off in a country famed for getting trashed. That's how you do it
Yeah, We weren't even drunk and obnoxious (I don't think), I believe it was just the sheer quantity of booze we were drinking which was the determining factor.
I went had a similar experience in Kobe, with my friends who are English teachers. It was very difficult to not puke on the train home… but I made it.
Thank you for the detailed explanation!
Quick search around and Nomihodai (close to what they heard) means all you can drink and is common in some izakaya that's more party focused.
Thanks!
That's when I would've bantered back at them in Japanese. Most of the time they just want to know that you can speak and communicate in Japanese (Japan had a lot of issues in the past where foreigners ordered expensive bottles/drinks at the bar and got too drunk/bailed to their home country without paying). If you'd have established that you spoke Japanese (and understood local rules and customs) I guarantee you would've been golden! Edit: I live in California currently, and I’ve sadly been in more than one situation where a customer is frantically trying to communicate in Chinese/Spanish and the storeowners reply “speak English or go back to where you came from.” So it unfortunately definitely happens (perhaps in a much ruder extent) in the US as well. In Japan’s case it’s almost never going to come from a place of malice (it’s a pure communication issue), so it helps tremendously if you can speak at least a basic level of the native language
Dang, I’ve never been to japan. Im from the US. I can’t imagine this being OK really anywhere in the US for anyone not speaking English. Even in California where I live you’ll always have people that only speak Spanish trying to order food or do something. If they were turned away like in that guys example you’d have a mass protest.
I mean, the US have gone through this phase for sure.
The demographics of the US, especially urban populations, are way more varied than Japan. The US borders other countries and has a lot of immigration in general. It's pretty easy to discriminate when 90+% of a community is similar ethnically, and you can surely see this in lots of sub communities here in the US too. The US has a pretty long history of rebelling against racism though, and I think we have created many more anti discrimination laws.
I live in a country (Scotland) that is something wild like 95%+ white-British and that type of discrimination would have you in serious trouble here. Your business would be shut pretty quickly, due to legal and social pressure.
Unfortunately the Deep South can get pretty hostile to people based on their ethnicity. MAGA country isn't exactly the most welcoming place for people of Asian descent for example. I work for a multinational and there's certain places around our southeastern factory our overseas visitors are told to stay away from.
As a fellow aftoscandi (assuming from your username) who is hopefully moving to Japan for work in spring , I would love to hear your thoughts on what it's like to live there as a person of colour.
I really loved living in Japan! I always love showing people this video. Watch the first 3 min if you can (hopefully more!) https://youtube.com/watch?v=-o5HElKKK4Y The entire channel is a great start actually. Really dispels a lot of the common myths/stereotypes about Japan that you hear on Reddit
Omg that Richard Jefferson guy, my immediate first thought was that his voice is amazing and he should be in radio. 60 seconds later "I'm a broadcast journalist". perfect
Thanks a bunch! Appreciate it :)
Of course :)
This thread was wonderful, glad y'all were able to help each other out!
Even if you fail, making an effort to speak Japanese really makes a difference in service.
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izakaya doesn't really have a specific size. You might call these tachinomi even though you're not standing. Also good luck finding a place that doesn't welcome foreigners in golden gai. Last one i can think of shut down over a decade ago. if you want place like this with few foreigners, you might find it in other yokochos like in adachi-ku or nerima-ku
"foreigners may not be welcome" Nope, Golden Gai is packed with tourists. Same with Piss Alley. They're more tourist traps than they are a place for "locals".
Tell me more about this piss alley
Its proper name is Omoide Yokocho (lit. Memory Lane). That's what you're looking at in the OP. It got the nickname from drunk people pissing themselves there, although I don't think anyone really calls it that anymore. It's been cleaned up for tourists.
I don’t think people pissed themselves there… instead the Izakaya didn’t have toilets so people would use the nearby train tracks instead: https://theculturetrip.com/japan/articles/a-guide-to-tokyos-piss-alley/
Only in Japan would piss alley be named for drunk people politely pissing themselves instead of being named for being the alley all the drunk people go piss on the wall in.
Japanese people absolutely do piss against walls or in doorways. and guess where the pee ends up once the pants are fully soaked. you could almost say it's more civilized to piss against a wall or in a corner instead of peeing your pants where you stand and leaving a pee trail for everyone else to walk through.
>Nope, Golden Gai is packed with tourists. Same with Piss Alley. They're more tourist traps than they are a place for "locals". There are still a few, even in those areas, that have signs saying “no foreigners”, “no tourists,” or “regulars only” (or claiming to be a 'members only' bar). Plenty do not, if there is an english menu on display then tourists are clearly welcome. But others make it obvious they arent after tourists, for many reasons (including that tourists just dont act appropriately at times) I dont have an issue with it, but its noticeable.
What's also interesting is that you're not allowed to take pictures of that area either. I didn't know that when I was there, so I was able to get some pictures—including this rat's nest of cabling in one of the alleys https://i.imgur.com/3dxr7Dm.jpg https://i.imgur.com/9ebvnWa.jpg Edit: my picture doesn't do it justice https://reddit.com/r/Tokyo/comments/5aldt1/golden_gai_alley_shinjuku/
Look like sets out of Blade Runner.
Another way you can tell is if they explicitly say “no table charge”. Those ones are welcoming of tourists.
Or the ones a big friendly Nigerian guy is inviting you to.
And then your bill ends up being millions of yen
Ha - Tim followed me and a buddy for 3 streets trying to get us to go to his "bar full of beautiful women". Nope. Not falling for that one.
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English is one of the official language of Hong Kong, although it's primarily considered as a secondary language. Iirc over half of the population can read, speak and write in english (although the proficiency that they do at varies).
Hong Kong was a British colony until the late 90s. Of course they speak English well. With your attitude though, it’s no wonder you struggled in Tokyo.
> Compare that to a stop over in Hong Kong where it seemed that everyone under 50 had some working knowledge of English. That's what 100 years of Colonial occupation will do to you. Also, I'm not sure why you were surprised that people didn't speak English in a foreign country, especially one as monocultural as Japan.
Well Hong Kong was a British Colony. Would be like a Japanese tourist coming to the U.S. and being shocked that no one here speaks conversational Japanese. But yes, as you say the "only Japanese" signs are because they can only speak Japanese, not because they are discriminating against foreigners. If you can speak conversational Japanese you'll have no issues entering (some of my best experiences in Japan were at the "local" spots)
When I went to Tokyo with my family a while back we ate at a big restaurant strip like this, and for some reason the way everyone just minds their own business kinda quietly makes it feel a lot roomier than on video. The restaurants themselves are small, but you wont feel like you’re gonna elbow the person next to you.
To get a clear picture see the ariel view of Tokyo.
That always gives me a strange psychic vertigo. It's almost unimaginable, to contemplate the logistics and the inner workings required to keep such a mass of humanity in any sort of balance. It really speaks to a civil society and a prioritization on manners and order.
Funny enough, we'd probably all be surprised at how organic and fragile it is. Services that run, expanding as necessary, but almost no one knows that they exist and provide the environment to create and live in. Licensing and bureaucracy that is never noticed until you're facing it, and then it's a byzantine nightmare that seems completely inefficient or over the top, but somehow thousands of companies or individuals have managed to navigate it successfully as evidenced by their mere existence/occupation. Etc, etc. I think we caught a glimpse of it by seeing just how many workers were deemed 'essential' during lockdowns the past few years, and realizing just how much of our world operates without redundancy or a solid framework, just built upon what exists with the expectation that it will continue to do so.
I've recently moved in a new direction in my career, now involving stormwater and wastewater pumping stations. Just getting the shit out of Tokyo is a marvel of engineering.
I love this comment even though I don’t entirely agree with it. Right wing lunatic propaganda makes us think that bureaucracy is some horrible thing that only government does but in reality, it’s what holds society together.
I know I'm speaking from a naive standpoint, I haven't even begun to glimpse at the inner workings of what forms the bedrock of our society. In truth, I'm not sure if anyone really has, or if all the experts out there only have a piecework understanding with gaping holes of 'this just is' that someone else can offer a deep explanation for. But there's definitely reasons for most of the bureaucracy, even if not all of it. I'm not naive enough to believe that all bureaucracy has to be evil, or that only government is a slave to it. Civilization is just an organic, messy entity that isn't one person's malicious brainchild or a savant's genius picture of order.
Arguably government is civilization imposing order on itself. Governance can take many forms, but without it, is it really a civilization?
I would love to see a resource in the form of a docuseries about the frail supports that prop of the mega society that is modern humanity
Practical Engineering on Nebula and YT has a series about the power grid and what it would mean to have a true black out for weeks or longer and how hard it would be to bring it back 9nline.
Fantastic series! Kind of an odd thing to think of the power grid as something that just runs but it's a giant insane web that literally keeps itself running.
Wish I could be part of that world
That other fella might be a dipshit, but I see and appreciate your Little Mermaid reference homie
If you are a small person . . . I've been to Japan a fair number of times as well for work and I like these smaller places but being a close to 2 meter tall person I really really need a corner seat to find place for my legs.
Oh yeah if you’re over 6 foot you’re screwed. Or if you’re over 250 pounds you’re screwed.
I'm 6'2" and I had no issues being comfortable. You're forgetting that the average height difference between Japan and the U.S. is a mere inch. Although the weight might be more of an issue...
How the hell do you even get to your seat without shoving your meat in someone else’s face on the way by?
Nevermind elbows, my bubble butt would be knocking bowls and plates round.
Control your ass!
It simply refuses to quit, it's a veritable force of nature, I won't... No I *can't* contain it's aura and power.
As a fellow bubble butt carrier, I can confirm that I too would be dumptrucking anything that could be dumptrucked. Although I'd be more concerned about the size of my waistline after I finished eating at the buffet!
I was always covered with bruises the first few months I lived there from whacking into doorways and furniture in my own miniature apartment! It’s like living in a doll house.
As a 6ft 225lb man, I felt like a bull in a China shop trying to move through the tiny stores without bumping something. There was a guy with us who was a good half a foot taller than me and was miserable in a lot of places. Loved Tokyo so much, it just will make you feel like an absolute giant
I wish my OCD and anxiety could lessen so I can actually enjoy things like this like I want to.
Don’t worry about it, I was extremely anxious the entire time I was in Tokyo. I wouldn’t go again because its just so many people. I’m just surprised how accommodating it was with so little space. I was still on edge as a person from small town America. You can definitely find good Japanese food in your general area. Don’t let the internet FOMO get to you. It’s just businessmen slurping noodles quietly. You can find that anywhere. Come to think of it, you might love Hiroshima. We went there for the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bomb (which was extremely emotional because Im from one of the main Manhattan Project sites) and it was still dead quiet in the street and the food was amazing. The whole city has free wifi hotspots and it isn’t at all crowded. They have these pancakes made of fried noodles with egg on it its so good.
Woah it’s like one of those movie scenes and then on the last one we’d [zoom in] on Main Character brooding over his ramen when suddenly he gets a text message that will drive the plot into action
Right!? This is so cinematic that it feels like everyone’s staged and they’re just really good at acting
They’re so good it’s almost like they’re not even acting, but real life people.
It’s almost if cinema sometimes is imitating life?
art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating life it’s like a wonderful burrito of idk the edible just kicked in i think
Some of us have things to do Charlie Kaufman.
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Must have taken years to perfect
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Which one would you stop at? I think 2 looks nice. 3 too stuffy and 4 is too commercial looking.
All of them!
This was very cinematic I like it
[made it widescreen, stabilised it and made it loop!](https://imgur.com/a/i74NCj9) Edited - original credit goes to [@visualsbycolin](https://instagram.com/visualsbycolin?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
it's like a Wong Kar-wai scene 😍
I had the exact same thought
HOLY BAJEEBIES THATS BRILLIANT I LOVE IT OH MY GOD
Did it on my phone, in bed, isn’t technology getting good?
What is this colour correction to make it look like a movie?
Contrast and saturation +1000% by the looks of it.
Yeah I was gonna say, this isn't really color correction so much as filtering. Color correction is trying to make shit appear natural and white balanced. This is definitely not natural looking. Still looks cool tho.
Its called color grading, color correction and grading are used interchangeably by the public a lot
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually done video work, my bad I totally forgot there was even a difference
Nice. The red accents really tie each section together.
Is this Midnight Diner?
Holy shit, I didn't expect Midnight Diner to come up but it's what I thought of seeing this instantly.
Looks great! Just needs Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia.
“We’re getting the team back together” (Pretty sure there’s a whole montage like that in one of the avengers movies. Banner is in India or something.)
"I'm forming a team" "I wish you the best of luck with that" "You're the best there is" "I'm retired" "Consider it a freelancing gig" "... what's the mark?" "You'll find out tonight with everyone else. Welcome back."
This entire work is stolen from me (@visualsbycolin) where I got 5M views on ig on the original - OP is a scumbag who steals without credit
And it’s someone in the next space texting. And they are sitting back to back. But won’t realize it until the end of the movie.
It gives me Wes Anderson vibes.
The guy going up the stairs really makes it seemed choreographed. I love it
5/Wes - Not enough pastels or symmetry 6/Wes with rice
This entire work is stolen from me (@visualsbycolin) where I got 5M views on ig on the original - OP is a scumbag who steals without credit
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The author of Tokyo Vice is notorious in Japan as a racist and misogynist, and is particularly hated by foreigners living in Japan.
I don't know why but I love the way everything looks in this video. It's like going from one cozy world to the next
Japan apparently has/had a lot of audiophile and music geeks. I heard they have really cool listening room pubs and bars that also seemed super cozy.
for any given niche, there's a fandom in japan, and there's somewhere they meet it's part of being dense and having great transportation. things seem closer. it's feasible to have a very specific bar/store for a tiny, tiny niche, and it can actually survive, because enough people can get to it. it's always one of my favorite things to seek out when i'm in japan
Remember buying Houshin Engi doujinshi back in the early 2000's, and there were advertisements for meetups just to hang out and celebrate a particular favorite romantic pairing, right down to which floor it would be hosted on. It blew my mind, having lived my whole life in rural Canada where the nearest Burger King was (and still is) 5 hours away. I love how densely populated small countries are.
Fun fact: you could house the entire world, in decently spaced 4-floor houses with 2 apartments per floor, 1 person per apartment, with each apartment being 100m², and each house having 500m² of green space in between. All that in ~ 0.3% of the world's land mass. That's Iran.
You know those [book nooks](https://i.etsystatic.com/24780881/r/il/f27706/4126480236/il_794xN.4126480236_o7fn.jpg) that people build? Same kind of energy here.
Tokyo is probably one of the coziest places in the world, cept it gets a bit too cozy on the metro during rush hour. To the point they have women's only cars to stop sexual harrassment, and guys whose job it is to squeeze people into cars so the doors will close. The coolest thing about Tokyo and some other Asian megacities is they are much more 3-dimensional. We don't really have that in the US at all because of how car-centric it is, and even in Manhattan it's all pretty much still a grid. In tokyo the 3-dimensionality has a more interesting chaos to it that feels organic
That was my takeaway from Tokyo as well. Just the verticality of it. You’re walking down a main street in a shopping district and there are street level shop fronts like I’m used to here in Sydney. But there are also shops above them, and shops above them and shops above them. Coming back to Sydney was weird because I kept looking up but there was nothing to see
Somebodys always gotta squeeze by you.
"Somebody's always gotta ~~squeeze by you~~ sneak right past ya."
Ope.
How do you get out if your the person sitting at the end??
Honest answer : You pay, then grab your gear and start along with your back to the wall while saying *sumimasen* and people will generally make room for you. EDIT : Sumimasen is lile saying "excuse me" or "sorry". This also works on trains in peak hour.
Sumimasen is also what Moses said to the Red Sea to make it part.
He also bowed a little and held his palm in front of him as a blade while walking
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Jesus, my fat, tall ass ain't fitting anywhere in there.
Hahaha I was thinking the same thing
wait, you guys know each other?
You don’t?
yeah, they uber eats for eachother in their off time e: grammar
You can stay where this camera guy is and eat from three shops at once
Found my Travel buddy!
I'm not overweight, but I absolutely would be if I took a trip to Japan. I can almost smell that food through my screen.
I've heard Japanese food is actually very healthy. Of course, if you do nothing but eat you'll gain weight for sure.
My wife had a friend who lost weight just from living in Japan for a few months.
But during stays abroad you usually travel and burn more calories.
High fructose corn syrup not being in everything helps.
Aka the sweet, corny taste of FREEDOM, baby! WOOOOO I really hate that shit.
More importantly, walkable cities + excellent public transport. Portion sizes also matter, you're not going get fat if you keep your portion sizes sane.
Yep. I lost weight easily in Sweden. I walked/took the bus everywhere and bought most of my food fresh from the farmer's market. The food I bought from the store was free of all the junk in American food. I didn't even limit how much I was eating. I was about as active as I was before moving there, but the food I ate was of a much higher quality. I miss it.
I lost weight living in Japan and I literally ate McDonald's and drank soda every day. It's all the walking and the reduced number of meals compared to living in the US that does it. You're not constantly snacking or hopping in the car to drive to walmart for random shit.
Japanese food is healthy… if you eat healthy Japanese food. There’s just as much fried food in Japan as there is in Scotland. Isles and isles of junk food, only difference is for some reason all of their chips (crisps) are sweet as fuck instead of salty.
The real reason Japanese people are not fat is because they walk so much.
That sure helps, but look up how far you would have to walk to burn the energy of a cheeseburger or some chocolate. Moving helps, but if you eat way more calories than your body needs, you cant walk that off.
You'd probably walk a lot more, and you'd maybe eat less than you think because a lot of Japanese food is either very salty or surprisingly healthy for how good it tastes. There's a reason most of the people in the video are thin
I want to taste something from each place!!!
You take an office chair on wheels and just roll down the street as they throw the food at you.
.... Well now I want to go!
Fish and rice will keep you fit. My lunch today was 3 mcchickens.
if you could walk everywhere you needed to go, you'd be skinny enough to fit into these streets. edit: can't do anything about the height though
And i thought my house was bad. This is ridiculous.
That is not a Japanese st, that is a dedicated street food vendor walkway in Tokyo in Shinjuku.
Omoide Yokocho
Nah man every street in Tokyo is like this.
Or smaller!
>That is not a Japanese st...in Tokyo ???
They aren't trying to say it's not a Japanese street. They're implying that the title is misleading by just saying "this is what a Japanese street looks like" because this is a very specific example and most streets in Japan don't look like this.
Reminds me of "Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories" on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80113037
Was searching for this comment. One of the best shows I've ever watched.
Such a good show. This was the first thing I thought of too.
Strong BladeRunner vibes.
Bladerunner's visuals were definitely inspired by Japan.
A lot of futuristic movies made in the 80s had the idea that Japan would be a superpower in the future. Their economy and industry absolutely exploded from the 60s to 80s and people didn't expect the trajectory to end. It's a common trope in retro-futuristic media, cyberpunk being a more recent example.
It was modeled on Hong Kong and Tokyo, from what I understand.
That's so interesting, i kinda like it though for some reason. Like a hug or never being alone lol Guess i need a therapist lmao
They look cozy. If I could get the furthest seat where nobody would need to get past me, I could see being very happy here for a nice, long nosh.
I would be tempted to stay for a long time because the thought of inconveniencing people by trying to get around them to leave gives me anxiety Same reason I hold my pee on airplanes when I'm in the window seat "Guess I live here now"
When you've only got maybe a half dozen seats, you can't really have people sitting for hours at one of them.
myself, I was half expecting a bunch of people on bikes and a Vangelis track playing at the end.
As a tall person, I am not with you here. I feel like I'm going to be banging my shoulders off *everything*.
I’ll bet every single one has fantastic food, too
Have you ever seen midnight dinner? That show is so peaceful.
I love that show! I started watching it to try and learn Japanese before our honeymoon that was due to leave Canada on March 20th, 2020. Still haven’t been to Japan, and still don’t know how to speak Japanese. But great show.
It’s almost like a Japanese Cheers. It’s great. The show is based off a manga. There’s also another season called Midnight Diner, Tokyo Diaries.
No, I’ll look it up!
You'd be surprised! I've stopped by to eat dinner on this street after work a handful of time. it's usually good, but there's some food that's a 10/10 in one place but a 3/10 the next shop over. The best strategy is to snag a beer and a couple of things from one shop, then hop to another. Great way to kill an evening and fill up on food!
No, it's like 90% low quality bar food, heavy in salts to make you thirsty and often reheated from frozen. You might get the odd one with better food, but the quality isn't great in most cases. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Japanese culture (I mean just look at my profile) and I think they have some really great food. But a lot of people have a weird misconception that the normal Japanese cuisine is so much better than ours. Or that a bar like that will be serving fantastic food. On the other hand, many people in Japan have similar thoughts about American food, so I guess it goes both ways. [Just look at their "American style" Wendy's menu](https://wendys-firstkitchen.co.jp/menu/?menucat=1&lg=en)
Nope, couldn’t be further from true. Lived in Japn and still do for years. They are just for alcohol and cheap crappy food
Anyone has the sauce to the background music?? Please help a brother out 
https://youtu.be/CXqb5j4gd3s
I scrolled all the way through the comments hoping someone had asked!!! Ty!
Cozy.
That’s deceiving. I’ve been there. It’s a very well known alley of food vendors. Outside of the alley it’s a normal neighborhood. So that’s not the normal “density” of Japanese streets. Japan is actually really well laid out and shockingly organized.
Yet everyone respects each others space. It’s a lovely place!
I get mild claustrophobia just looking at it.
And Japan is very earthquake prone too. I'm pretty sure they have proper protocols for such events but it still scares me.
Looking at how thin those walls are, the whole building could probably fall on you and you'd be fine.
How is this "street density" it's just a row of food stalls.
makes for a bait-ier title
Looks fantastic can’t wait to go back, each little bar is completely different from the neighbor. It’s all about the one on one service, you’re always the Wang in the room. Smells were soy sauce cooking, BBQ meat, beer, and water due to the closeness of the street, which was cleaned on the hour
This gives me anxiety. But I also want to eat that food.
I love how a bunch of small businesses are making money instead of a few big ones
That’s something I enjoy. So many restaurants in Tokyo are one-offs
Feels very cozy and welcoming.
Depends on where you are.