Tokyo Guides

Tips, reviews, maps of niche topics in Tokyo. Includes neighbourhoods, cafes, restaurants, tips, apps, startups, cultural notes.

Tokyo Guides

Invisible Tokyo: A Local Foreigner’s Photo Diary

A visual peak into the daily life of an East Tokyo local that includes greenery, waterways, food, shrines, and community.

Tokyo Guides

My Japanese Diet: 20 Daily Foods (Plus a Restaurant Map)

Value sushi lunches, udon, ramen, tofu, snacks…my local tips for a yummy and affordable food and restaurants choices in Japan. (Tokyo-focused)

Tokyo Guides

How a Map Changed My Tokyo: A Wheelchair Photo Diary

A visual diary of the accessibility and wheelchair related things I began noticing in Tokyo after a personal station mapping project.

Tokyo Guides

10 Most Original Souvenirs from Tokyo: Authentic, Useful, and Affordable

Best shopping ideas for authentic Japanese cultural gifts and souvenirs.

Tokyo, Tokyo Guides

Tokyo Cafes: Yanaka Coffee

Yanaka Coffee is one of those little stalls you’d usually miss. It’s the one or two people sitting on a bench that catches your eye. The languid, contented people-watcher is a permanent fixture for this coffee stall. This roaster has over 15 options in its shelves. Most of them are light roasts, and sourced […]

Tokyo, Tokyo Guides

Tokyo Cafes: Macchinesti Coffee

From the outside, the year-round Christmas lights and neon coffee sign, Macchinesti Coffee looks like an over-zealous suburban transplant in sophisticated Tokyo. Nonetheless, to the discerning coffee drinker, the red sign clearly says ‘Chemex’, indicating a refined brewing sentiment. The interior comes as a bit of a surprise. Even though it’s an open space with a […]

Tokyo Guides

Accessible Tokyo Map Guide: Go Anywhere With Your Phone

Tokyo’s a city with incredible complexity and endless discoveries. This city is an experience. This post is meant to help people get to the places they want to go in order to have those experiences. Google Maps is very accurate in Tokyo for car routes, subways, trains, and buses. The subways and trains usually on-time. […]

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2019. Jimbocho in Tokyo. That feeling when crossing the threshold... #tokyolife #bookworm #bookstagram #japanlife #tokyo

According to the Tibetan calendar, the Buddha's day of birth, enlightenment, and passing occurred on June 17 this year. To mark the occasion, the devout trek up to the highest temple on earth, the Rongbuk Monastery, at the northern basecamp of Mount Everest, called Mount Qomolangma, ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ and 珠穆朗瑪峰 to the people have worshipped it for centuries. All across the Tibetan Plateau, the holy fires will burn, tribes and pilgrims will gather, and new prayer flags will be unfurled in courtyards and splayed across mountain faces as an offering to the sky. On this holiest of days, we were blessed by the sacred mountain, so typically shy, with unfettered views as we approached from morning through the afternoon. #tibet #everest #珠穆朗瑪峰 #buddhism #pilgrimage #bluesky #mountains #himalayas

Any guesses at where this is? Tip, it's a UNESCO Heritage Site. The photo is in my new blog post (click on my profile link). Went against my nature and joined a tour. Unfortunately, that's the only way to see this place as a foreign national these days. But I was looking for much more than temples, which we got plenty of and thorough explanations about from both our local guides and our main tour guide (a bit of a bookworm, him). #temple #gold #architecture #asia #rooftops #fujifilm #china #wanderlust #西藏 #拉薩 #unescoworldheritage #bluesky #nofilter

It’s hard to arrive in Tokyo with a blank canvas. The world’s most populous city looms large in the global imagination, ascribed for decades by writers, filmmakers, and now the masses with smartphones. Even before we’ve landed, we’ve seen the city lights, the sushi in Bordain’s food tours, the crowds from every angle of Shibuya crossing, the “weird” and the “wonderful”, whatever those may be for each of us.⠀ ⠀ Virtually unheard of until the cafe boom at Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, Koto Ward is one of those forgotten backwaters where many a Tokyoite will stumble locating in their mind, before struggling further to find anything to say about. ⠀ ⠀ The Shitamachi, the Low City, defined by its dark and crowded, fire-prone alleys that bordered on expansive wetlands criss-crossed by waterways are where the early peoples of Edo gathered to serve the Shogunate, and later Meiji, courts. In the corners of nondescript streets and the ubituitous, unassuming canals, a walker can retrace the the city of merchants that laid the foundation of modern-day Tokyo.⠀ ⠀ As part of the Historical Tokyo Walks that follow Edo Tokyo cultural sites, the Nihonbashi-Fukagawa route (日本橋本所深川コース) comes from the Japanese website guide Sanpo Reikibun. The city has 23 Historical Tokyo Walks, one for each ward. My map has the English translation for the Japanese route summary as well as added some additional historical context or information. Major sites covered along the route include: Nihonbashi, Mitsukoshi flagship store, Tokyo Stock Exchange, haiku poet Mastuo Basho’s neighbourhood, the Fukagawa Fudoson, Tomioka Hachimangu, Kiyosumi Garden, Ryugoku Gokugikan, Former Yasuda Garden, Edo Tokyo Museum, Karamae Bridge. For anime watchers, the 3-Gatsu no Lion, Tsukumogami Kashimasu, Onihei Hanakcho. ⠀ ⠀ To get the map & route to walk Tokyo at your next visit! Go to my blog in my profile and search the piece: "Historical Tokyo Walk: Nihonbashi – Fukagawa"⠀ ⠀ https://buff.ly/2WY1gX1⠀ ⠀ #tokyotravel #tokyolife #historicaltokyo #japan_vacations #visitjapan #discovertokyo #explorejapan #igersjp #icu_japan #japan_of_insta #japantrip #historylover #worldhistory #ilovehistory #edotokyo #fukagawa #東京 #江東区 #深川 #日本橋

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