Tokyo Without a Map

There are 300 konbini within a kilometre of where you're standing. You are never more than 90 seconds from a hot meal, a phone charger, or a clean toilet.

Tokyo has a reputation for expense that is twenty years out of date. The yen's sustained weakness against major currencies has produced a city where a Michelin-starred ramen costs $12 and a craft beer in Shimokitazawa costs $4. The luxury end of Tokyo — the Ginza apartments, the omakase counters — is genuinely expensive. The vast majority of the city is not.

Elsewhere rates Japan at 1.9× for European reference. That number is now probably 2.2× and rising with the currency situation. It means a quality of life that is difficult to replicate elsewhere: the transit system that runs on the second, the residential density that puts a bookshop and a pottery studio and a jazz bar within five minutes of any apartment, the food infrastructure that makes even a convenience store lunch a considered pleasure.

The thing Tokyo asks of you is attention. The city rewards people who pay it. The handwritten menu in the window, in Japanese, listing fish by the day's catch. The florist who spent forty minutes arranging ten stems of something you can't name. The neighbourhood festival that just appears, unmissed because you walked the same street at the same time on a different Tuesday.