Tokyo

You may recall my terrible arrival in Tokyo where I couldn’t get any money from the ATMs.

This Tokyo last train (終電) visualizer is a fun concept but given that all the trains disappear at roughly the same time, it’s usefulness is somewhat limited.

Just a quick review of 2025 as usual heavily inspired by the one that Hans puts out.

I get started late after jetlag keeps me up between 2-5am. Then when I finally catch sleep, it’s time to rise and leave. The Fitbit clocks me at 3h47m of sleep.

I wanted to write how I got to Ise in the first place and why that was such a terrible experience.

I don’t really buy this idea that Japan’s urban environment has been the key factor to create its immense specialization in crafts. Compare it to Berlin where rents have been incredibly cheap and zoning mixed but without the necessary human capital the only thing those factors generated were cheap bars.

A bit ostensibly about a rice cooker but in fact much more about post-war architecture and social relations in Japan.

Crucially, at street scale, on-street parking is not allowed, which opens up the streetscape for people, on foot and on bike, for conversation and activities, and yes, for moving goods and people around but as a secondary ‘enabling’ activity to the life of the street itself.

Here are my notes from a couple of weeks of drinking coffee in Tokyo on a fact finding mission for Cuppings. With Cuppings we try to give you a guide of the best coffee places around the world based on our personal tastings. Some notable locales are still not as well represented as they should be. London and New York have their own excellent guides for coffee with Oliver Strand’s Coffee App and the London Coffee Map. Tokyo is one place that I thought we should fill in.