Originally, they were practical clothes. The kind of thing you wore when you had fields to work in, sleeves to keep out of the way, and absolutely no time to wonder whether your silhouette was on trend. During the war, monpe spread across Japan as women’s standard activewear. And as you can imagine, this did not help their later image. I cannot think of any garment that recovered from being associated with wartime austerity, agricultural labour, and your grandmother telling you that people used to be more sensible.

Credit: Meomeo15

In postwar Japan, as everyday clothing became even more Western, monpe were pushed into the mental cupboard labelled “rural,” “old-fashioned,”and “probably worn by someone who knows how to pickle twelve kilos of daikon without looking at a recipe.” They did not disappear. But they were not exactly walking down Omotesando being photographed by lifestyle magazines either.

And then, as often happens, the very things that made them uncool began to look suspiciously like good design.

They are loose at the waist. They are easy to move in. They narrow below the knee, so they do not flap around helplessly when you walk, cook, garden, cycle, sit on the floor, or chase a child who has decided that public space is a philosophical concept. They are light. They are practical. They make sense in a hot, humid country where jeans sometimes feel less like trousers and more like a denim punishment.

Credit: Unagi no Nedoko

Unagi no Nedoko came to save them. Unagi no Nedoko is a company based in Yame, Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. They work with regional crafts and products, giving them a contemporary life without pretending they were born yesterday in a concept store. They have been especially important in reintroducing monpe as something you might actually want to wear. Not as “oh, gosh, look at this quaint Japanese thing.” But rather as: “here is a pair of trousers that already solved several problems, and maybe the problem was us.”

Credit: Unagi no Nedoko

And as such, they call Monpe“Japan’s jeans.” Naturally. Jeans began as workwear too, worn by miners and farmers. Then somehow everyone from teenagers to CEOs decided denim was normal, and now we pay extra for holes. Monpe have a similar logic. They began as work clothes, shaped by real bodies doing real things. Add good fabric, better cuts, modern colours, and suddenly the old farm trousers start looking like the cleverest person in the room (we haven’t yet arrived at paying extra for holes though).

Many of Unagi no Nedoko’s MONPE are made with Kurume kasuri, a woven cotton textile from southern Fukuoka. It is soft, durable, and full of those tiny irregularities that make cloth feel alive rather than manufactured by an algorithm having a sad day. Some pieces use traditional indigo patterns. Others are plain, striped, checked, bright, quiet, strange, elegant, or exactly the kind of thing you buy thinking “this is very Japanese” and then wear three times a week because it has an elastic waist.

They also run the Monpe Hakurankai, where they take their little shop around Japan to promote monpe. The idea is to know, wear, buy, and use: First you learn where the fabric comes from, who makes it, and why the shape exists. Then you try it on. Then you decide whether you are the sort of person who can leave Japan with a pair of sensible traditional work trousers and somehow feel cooler than before.

You can buy them from Unagi no Nedoko’s own shops, including their stores in Fukuoka, Yame, Ehime (that’s in Ozu, a town that also has a Nipponia hotel - only a 4min walk), and Tokyo, as well as through their online shop. For overseas customers, their site also points to Buyee, which means you do not necessarily have to fit a pair of trousers into your suitcase beside ten boxes of snacks and one regrettable ceramic raccoon.

Would they make a good souvenir from Japan?

Definitely. They are light, useful and say something about Japanese everyday life, textile craft, regional production, agricultural history, wartime memory, and contemporary design, while also saying, quite simply, “I would like to be comfortable now.”

No clue whether they will have your exact size, of course. They do have a sizing guide. But bodies are bodies, trousers are trousers, and optimism is not a return policy. Try them on if you can. Worst case, you learn something about Japanese textile culture. Best case, you become the only person in a radius of 500km who owns a monpe.

It will almost certainly be more comfortable than jeans in August.

More Japanese fashion? Also check out sneakers, t-shirts, bras, shawls/ masks, an assortment of fashion brands, and octopus earpieces.

You may also want to peek at the June 2025 installment with info on flea markets, as well as November 2025 (Skytree Yoga), February (Beer!), June, and July 2026. Some of these exhibitions and events are still on. Some events keep coming back. Tokyo does not stop just because a newsletter has moved on.

The Surprisingly Good Architecture of Starbucks Japan

I don’t have to much interest in recommending an international coffee chain to someone visiting Japan, but after years of walking past these stores I have reluctantly had to concede that Starbucks Japan is occasionally very good at buildings. Starbucks has had a …”difficult year”, including serious controversy around its South Korean business, alongside broader questions about labour relations, operational strategy and what happens when a coffee shop increasingly starts behaving like a fast-food operation. I mention that because Starbucks reliably produces strong opinions, and I have no interest in pretending the company is above criticism. What interests me here is something much narrower: the way Starbucks Japan has used some of its stores to engage with existing architecture and local history. Unlike Tokyo Disney, which is operated in Japan by the domestic licensee Oriental Land and creates purpose-built environments, Starbucks is a global brand operating under its own name, which makes its Japanese approach particularly interesting from a business perspective. Its Regional Landmark Stores are not simply “Japanese-looking” branches: some reuse or adapt historically significant buildings, while others incorporate local materials, crafts and architectural references into new structures. That does not make Starbucks a heritage organisation, nor does it erase the criticisms surrounding the company. But it is a useful example of how a global corporation can localise without merely adding decorative motifs to an otherwise interchangeable retail space - and how commercial use can sometimes help keep older buildings active rather than turning them into static exhibits. Do check out the latest in Yokohama’s Umi-no-kōen

Credit: Starbucks Japan

Flowers with Gothic Baggage

I love red spider lilies for many reasons, but honestly, the Japanese name Higanbana 彼岸花 alone is already wonderfully dramatic, tied to the autumn equinox, graveyards, farewells, and all the things a flower probably should not be thinking about. A flower with lots of gothic baggage. That contrast may be exactly why I like them: elegant, slightly sinister, ridiculously photogenic, and never quite as solemn as their reputation suggests.

If you want to see them in quantity without making the much longer pilgrimage to the famous fields of Kinchakuda in Saitama, Matsudo has a rather lovely alternative. At Sokōin Temple 祖光院, around 300,000 (!) red spider lilies spread through the temple grounds, mostly red but with white, yellow and pale pink mixed in. The flowers winding between trees and old stone figures make the whole place feel considerably more mysterious than somewhere ten minutes’ walk from Tokiwadaira Station has any right to feel. Flowering is usually around mid-September to early October, although spider lilies are notoriously unimpressed by human calendars, so check the bloom situation before setting out. And it is still a working temple and cemetery rather than a flower park, so wander and photograph accordingly!

Credit: Enjoytokyo

Big Lanterns, Very Narrow Streets

The Nebuta Festival ねぶた祭り is a vibrant annual summer event held in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, renowned for its massive, glowing lantern floats depicting historical figures, kabuki actors, and mythical demons. Dating back centuries, the festival traditionally served as a ritual to ward off sleepiness and evil spirits during the busy agricultural season, and it now attracts millions of visitors as one of the country's great Tohoku summer festivals. The Nakanobu Nebuta Festival 中延ねぶた祭 is a local Tokyo spin-off held biennially in September along the shopping streets of Shinagawa Ward (primarily the Nakanobu Skip Road and Showa-dori shopping districts). Organized in cooperation with Kuroishi City in Aomori Prefecture, it brings authentic, massive illuminated nebuta floats, traditional flute-and-drum hayashi music, and dancers straight to a residential neighborhood in the capital. The event features daytime community performances and food fairs followed by a dynamic evening parade where giant paper-mache floats navigate the tight urban Shōtengai architecture.

Credit: Shinagawa Keizai Shinbun

A Low-Risk Encounter with Theatre

Tokyo Festival brings theatre, dance and other forms of live performance out into the city, with events designed to make the performing arts easy to encounter even if you are not a regular theatre-goer. One particularly accessible part is Performing Arts Base 2026, held at MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives on September 5–6 and at Tokyo International Forum in Yurakucho on September 25–27. Admission is free, and the programme ranges from theatre, dance and musicals to physical comedy, street performance, contemporary circus, and Japanese dance, alongside talks and seminars. Some performances take place in public or open spaces, so you can simply come across them while moving through the city, while other programmes offer a closer look at how contemporary performing arts are created. It is less about choosing one big headline production and more about sampling a surprisingly broad range of performance styles and finding something you might not otherwise have gone to see.

If you already follow Tokyo's independent theatre scene closely, you probably don't need me to tell you about this. If words like “contemporary circus” usually make you wonder whether you'll be trapped in a black box for ninety minutes, the free drop-in format is exactly the point.

Credit: CAT-A-TAC

Don’t miss the November 5 Tokyo Substack meet-up! Café Port Glasgow is one of my favourite cafes in Tokyo - super happy it happens there!

Also, in Tokyo in February 2027? You might want to reserve some time in December 2026 to buy tickets for the Chichibu Whisky Festival 2027. For the 2026 festival, overseas ticket sales opened on December 15, so I would start checking from early December rather than remembering this in February when everything useful has already happened.

But back to A. When she invited me to spend a weekend at her parents’ house back in university , she asked whether there was anything nearby I particularly wanted to see, probably thinking I wanted to go shopping at the AEON mall. But I said kofun. I still remember the mixture of annoyance and bewilderment with which her family then found themselves being dragged back to a place they had already been thoroughly bored by on their junior-high-school excursions. To them, it was an old school-trip destination; to me it was evidence of how power had once been written into the landscape. I like to think my enthusiasm gave them a slightly different view of it too.

And this is really the problem and pleasure of kofun: from ground level you usually cannot see the famous shape at all. You need a map, an aerial photograph, or a conveniently elevated viewpoint to understand what you are looking at. And no, this is not permission to solve the problem by sending up a drone. Drone filming in Japan in general requires permission, so please do not acquire an interest in ancient Japanese history and immediately become a diplomatic aviation problem.

If you are a historian, especially if your heart beats faster at the words “prehistory,” “state formation,” or “grave goods,” the great kofun areas in Gunma and Saitama, are probably worth the trip. The Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group in Osaka, including the enormous Daisen Kofun attributed to Emperor Nintoku, is the blockbuster version: vast, politically important, and UNESCO-approved. The only small problem is that, from the side, many kofun look like wooded hills politely refusing to explain themselves. I guess, that is part of their charm. Also part of their inconvenience. You may stand there, deeply moved by early Japanese political centralisation, while your spouse sees only trees.

Credit: Nakatsuyama Kofun from the side… a hill with green?

Even Tokyo has its own quieter kofun pleasures. They are smaller, humbler, and hidden between parks, shrines, inside residential neighbourhoods - as if ancient elites had decided to become discreet real estate features. Along the Tama River, especially around the Setagaya and Ota ward border, there is a dense little cluster of burial mounds connected to the old Ebara Plateau kofun groups. Tamagawadai Park is probably the easiest starting point, because it has several mounds in one place and, very helpfully, the Tamagawadai Park Kofun Exhibition Hall. This small museum gives you the context you badly need when looking at what otherwise may appear to be a suspiciously meaningful bump in the ground. Nearby, Noge-Otsuka Kofun in Setagaya is one of the more impressive local examples, with its preserved shape and quiet residential dignity. Tamagawa Sengen-jinja Shrine in Ota is also worth a visit, because it sits on top of an older kofun, turning the site into a layered landscape of burial, worship, Fuji devotion, and excellent views over the river. Tokyo likes to build over things. Sometimes it does so with surprising elegance.

Credit: Tokyu

Before I go on - one small terminology point: “keyhole-shaped” is not a literal translation of the Japanese term zenpō-kōen-fun (前方後円墳). The Japanese describes the form more prosaically as a mound with a square or rectangular front and a round rear; “keyhole” is simply the very useful visual comparison English speakers adopted because, from above, that is exactly what it looks like.

What makes kofun interesting is not only their shape, but what they say about power. Large burial mounds are always statements. They tell people who controlled labour, land, ritual, trade, and probably everyone’s afternoon. The spread of the keyhole shape across the archipelago suggests the expansion of political networks linked to the Yamato kingship. The grave goods, including mirrors, weapons, armour, ornaments, pottery, and horse trappings, point to elite status and to strong connections across East Asia. Earlier nationalist readings often preferred Japan to develop in splendid isolation, because nations enjoy this sort of story about themselves. Modern archaeology is much less obedient. It places kofun culture in a wider maritime world of exchange with the Korean Peninsula and China, involving technology, iron, ceramics, horses, migration, diplomacy, imitation, and probably quite a lot of mutual side-eye.

Credit: Pennihonshi

If you are a visitor to Japan and are looking to sight kofun, the trick is not to expect ruins in the dramatic Rome or Athene sense. There will be no broken columns, no tragic marble torsos, no helpful emperor pointing at the horizon. A kofun visit is mostly just a look at a wooded mound, then at a river, then a slope, and then at the city around it, and slowly the logic becomes visible. So, understandable, my friend A was not very interested: These elevations shaped the landscape politically and ritually. Later generations reused many of the same places for shrines and other sacred sites, because once a spot has power, people tend not to waste it. They simply rename it, rebuild it, and pretend this was always the plan.

If you leave from or arrive in Japan at KIX airport, and have some time to spare, do go to Sakai - especially if you want scale. Go to Gunma or Saitama if you want rich regional archaeology. But if you are in Tokyo and have an afternoon, the (for better lack of words) cute kofun along the Tama River are more than enough to start with. Alternatively, there’s a small one next to Tokyo Tower.
They sit there under trees, surrounded by dog walkers, apartment blocks, and children on bicycles, quietly reminding you that the city is much older and stranger than it usually admits.

Finally, thanks to whose comment on an article inspired this one!

And, of course, most famously, you can leave your handbag unattended in a café with the serene confidence of someone who has either great faith in humanity or very expensive insurance.

Japanese safety is not the same as, say, Central European safety. In France, Denmark, or Germany, as far as I understand it, a child walking to school is treated as a small traffic participant. Ideally, a European child has practised their route, knows the crossings, waits at red lights, and understands that if they do something stupid, an annoying grown-up will very likely shout at them from across the street.

In Japan, the child’s independence is surrounded by other systems. There are walking groups to school (which Canada and the UK also have). Yellow hats, which Germany also has. Volunteers at crossings, lollipop ladies (yup also in the UK), local patrols, PTA instructions, neighbourhood notices, name tags, bag covers are things you also find in other countries - but less well known are and, hanging from children’s school backpack randoseru, the bōhan buzzer: a small plastic scream in case society briefly fails.

Credit; Nakagami

The bōhan buzzer, or 防犯ブザー, translates rather beautifully as “crime-prevention buzzer.” It is a small device children can use to alert grown-ups when they are in danger. Pull a strap or pin, and it goes off loudly enough to make everyone nearby reconsider their life choices.

Of course, this does not mean Japanese children live in constant danger.

It means their freedom is carefully packaged.

It is also worth noting that “safe” does not mean “cars will stop.” In Central Europe, a zebra crossing often feels like a small legal magic spell. You step forward, and cars stop. Most cars, anyway. In Japan, the same gesture can become a philosophical experiment with real consequences. Legally, pedestrians have priority. Emotionally, the driver may not have received the memo.

But I digress.

The bōhan buzzer is not about traffic. It belongs to the fear of the suspicious stranger, the empty street, the moment when a child needs to make noise and summon adults. And maybe that is why it works so well as a souvenir.

Like other things I have introduced here, it is not uniquely Japanese as an object. Personal alarms exist everywhere. But in Japan, or as far as I understand in East Asia more broadly, it becomes part of a whole worldview: children should move through the city by themselves, but their aloneness should have a system, a label, a route, and a button that screams.

The Toddler, my sibling’s child, starts school next week, and I was wondering what to give them for that big event. Something Japanese, obviously, because I live here and must occasionally justify the postage. So after consultation with the parents, we decided on a buzzer and a colour, and then I bought one with 96 decibels.

Maybe it is also a souvenir for you.

You never know. It may one day save you from something.

At the very least, it will tell you how thin your hotel walls are.

Credit: anibell

But do let me introduce a place to stay, with one important warning: Art House Hinode is not based on my personal taste. This recommendation is based on location, views, awards, and the fact that other people seem to be very excited about sleeping inside what looks like an art installation having a nervous breakdown. Art House Hinode is a private penthouse-style “art gallery hotel” in Minato-ku, near Hinode Station and within walking distance of Hamamatsuchō. It sits above Tokyo Bay, looking out toward Hinode Pier (thus the name), Rainbow Bridge, and the city skyline, which is, frankly, a very strong argument. Tokyo Bay does a lot of heavy lifting here.

Credit: Art House Hinode

In practical terms, though, this works less like a conventional Tokyo hotel and more like a whole-floor private stay: you are booking the entire 87-square-metre space for your group rather than buying into the usual hotel ecosystem of lobby, breakfast room, housekeeping rhythm and twenty-four-hour front desk. The space itself is 87 square metres and designed as a whole-floor private stay for groups or families of up to ten people. There are two main room concepts: tthe blue-toned “Yūgen” 幽玄 room, named for the Japanese aesthetic idea of subtle or partially concealed depth, and the pink-toned “Kagerō” 陽炎 room - literally the shimmering haze you see above hot ground - which goes for something more playful and classical. According to AirBnb, there are built-in sleeping areas, a high-end kitchenette, two bathrooms, organic amenities, local craft materials, and even upcycled hinoki-cypress. At night, phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark elements softly guide you through the space, because apparently turning on a normal lamp was too emotionally simple.

I believe this is also why people like it. As a group sleepover and social-media backdrop, I can absolutely see the appeal. From the photographs, there appears to be almost no visually neutral surface. So be prepared to take 300 photos before putting down your suitcase.

Credit: Art House Hinode

To be honest, I would not be able to sleep in that space. It has the energy of a place that keeps trying to have a conversation with you even after midnight. The colours are strong. The surfaces are active. The ceiling is involved. The lighting has opinions. Instead of giving you visual silence, it gives you concepts. Many concepts. Possibly too many concepts. When I pay for accommodation, especially expensive accommodation, I want somewhere to decompress. I am personally much closer to Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows: dimness, restraint, a surface occasionally having the decency not to demand my attention.

The location needs one small Tokyo-resident footnote. Hinode itself is on the Yurikamome line, which is useful for the waterfront but is not the line I would build an entire Tokyo trip around. The more important station here is Hamamatsuchō, because that puts you onto the JR Yamanote and Keihin-Tōhoku lines and puts Haneda within relatively easy reach via the Tokyo Monorail. So I would call this a particularly good base if your Tokyo involves the bay, Odaiba, Toyosu (teamLab!) or an airport connection; somewhat less obviously brilliant if you plan to spend every night in Shinjuku and crawl home after the last train. The view seems to be fabulous (maybe I would stay here after all - for the view). Large private accommodation with Tokyo Bay views is not something you find every day, especially if you are travelling as a group. And if the price starts somewhere around the “oh dear” range, it becomes less ridiculous when divided between several people. At ¥222,000 for two nights, it looks absurd beside a business hotel; divided among seven adults and three children, however, it comes to ¥11,100 per person per night. That suddenly puts it into perfectly ordinary Tokyo-hotel territory. But as with everything, rates vary sharply by date, so compare the whole-property price per person rather than the headline nightly rate.

My short version: book it for a group, a celebration, the bay view, or because you actively enjoy maximalist interiors. Do not book it because you simply need a convenient Tokyo hotel and have been seduced by photographs.

Credit: Art House Hinode

I am also not the only person finding the place notable: That said, I absolutely do understand why it is popular. It only opened in January 2026, but it has already accumulated 27 Airbnb reviews, a 5.0 rating and Guest Favourite status. So apparently the ceiling and I are in the minority. Further, Art House HINODE placed second in the 転貸部門 — roughly, the “rented-property” or sublease category - at the BEST OF MINPAKU 2026 awards. The organisers define the category as minpaku operated in properties the operator rents rather than owns. I would not book a room because it won an award, but it is useful evidence that the appeal is not confined to whoever wrote the property's Instagram captions.

Credit: Art House Hinode

Would I stay there myself? Maybe for the windows. Maybe in the blue room. To work on a month's worth of Substack articles. Otherwise I would lie awake feeling judged by the ceiling. But there is another reason for my ambivalence that has nothing to do with the ceiling. Visitors encounter accommodation mainly as a question of where to sleep; residents also encounter it as a question of what happens to housing when somewhere becomes more profitable by the night than by the month. I am generally not enthusiastic about the Airbnb-ification of cities, and I would personally rather see Tokyo move toward much tighter controls on short-term rentals, particularly where ordinary housing is being converted into tourist accommodation. Barcelona’s attempts to push housing back toward residential use are much closer to my instincts. So my interest in Art House Hinode should not be read as a blanket endorsement of short-term rentals. I am looking at this particular property as a place a visitor might choose to stay, not arguing that Tokyo needs more apartments turned into holiday accommodation.

This is more or less the emotional starting point for Kuroneko Awase, a card game made entirely of photographs of real black cats. The basic idea is memory. You turn over cards and try to find the matching pair. Easy. Except all the cards are black cats. Ordinary memory games give your brain categories to hang things on: a red car, a banana, an elephant. Kuroneko Awase removes almost all of that scaffolding. Every card initially enters the brain as black cat, and only after repeated humiliation do you realise that you have to distinguish “slightly glossy black cat with yellowish eyes” from “slightly less glossy black cat with yellowish eyes” - and remember where those cards are located. As a cat lover, you do start out confident. but then you end up questioning not only your memory, but any moral right you ever claimed to call yourself observant. Soon you are studying fur texture, eye colour and ear shape like a forensic investigator, and somehow getting worse. And all the kitties suddenly carry a certain expression of mild disappointment.

Credit: Wannyan-Awase

I have seen a lot of aggressively “Japanese” souvenir games over the years, which usually means someone has put Mount Fuji, sushi or ukiyo-e on a regular set of cards, et voilà. Kuroneko Awase is much less interested in performing Japan for you. If you (or your loved ones back home) like card and board games (or are smug about having a good memory) I would like to think it is a very good little thing to take home from Japan. If you like cats, even better, because Japan has certainly managed to build an impressive amount of cultural infrastructure around cats: cat mascots, cat stationery, cat islands, cat cafés, cat-shaped everything. And best of all, this card game also has a nice charity feature: many of the cats featured are actually rescue cats, and part of the proceeds goes to animal welfare organisations!

So you can sit around a table failing to tell black cats apart and still feel that, on some level, you are doing good.

If you hate memory games, this will not convert you. It is still memory, only now memory has black fur and claws. Or maybe the black-white cat version is easier? Well, if you don’t like cats, and are more of a dog person, there is also Shiba Awase (black and red), Pomeranian Awase (red, white and black), Pug Awase, Ferret Awase, Cow Awase in the same spirit. Offers the same existential crisis, only canine, mustelidae and bovinae.

Credit: Wannyan-Awase

This card game, especially the black cat version is the sort of souvenir I particularly like recommending because it does not become useless once you get home. It is small enough to put in a suitcase, you do not need shelf space for it, and unlike many decorative souvenirs, you can actually inflict it on your friends.

Available online for 1,980 JPY here, or with J. Bezos’ Grand Mercantile. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s sold at Sugorokuya, my go-to board game shop.

I suspect that if I played Kuroneko Awase often enough, eventually I really would learn to tell all twenty-five cats apart. I would recognise the ears, the eyes, the particular degree of glossiness. And then someone would put Chris Pine and Chris Evans in front of me and I would once again have absolutely no idea.

Credit: Starbucks

Child logic of course does not hold up, and sign language is not universal. Just like spoken languages, they emerged independently in different communities around the world, shaped by geography, history, community, education, and contact with other local languages. American Sign Language and British Sign Language, I recently came to know are mutually unintelligible even though the UK and the US share a spoken language. Japanese Sign Language and French Sign Language are about as different from each other as their spoken counterparts do. Many signs that seem pictorial and self-evident are actually community-specific conventions, chosen differently by different communities - much like how the written word for “water” shares nothing across English, Arabic, and Mandarin. The diversity of sign languages is a reminder that language - in any form - is a human and local invention.

Credit: Starbucks

Spoken Japanese and Japanese Sign Language (JSL) may share the same cultural home, but they are fundamentally distinct languages. In simple sentences, both spoken Japanese and JSL often place the verb at the end. But that resemblance should not be mistaken for shared grammar. That means, both say “I apple eat” rather than “I eat apple” - which differs from American Sign Language, for instance, which follows Subject-Verb-Object order (“I eat [an] apple”) closer to spoken English. But beyond that surface parallel, JSL operates by entirely different rules. Much of its grammar is conveyed not through hand shapes alone but through what linguists call non-manual signals - eyebrow movements, gaze direction, mouth shape, and body posture all carry grammatical meaning. JSL also has its own fingerspelling system based on the Japanese syllabary rather than an alphabet, and a unique vocabulary that sometimes draws on written Japanese, including elements associated with kanji, tracing their shapes in the air. JSL (日本手話) should also not be confused with Signed Japanese (対応手話), a system that represents spoken Japanese more directly through signs. JSL is a natural language with its own grammar; Signed Japanese is structured around spoken Japanese. In short, sharing a country and a word order is about where the resemblance ends.

And - there is a Signing Starbucks in Kunitachi. Its official name is Starbucks Coffee nonowa Kunitachi. It opened in 2020 as the first Starbucks Signing Store in Japan. The store is run mainly by Deaf and hard-of-hearing staff, together with hearing staff who use Japanese Sign Language. So the common language of the store is not the usual café language of “iced latte, medium, Hanna with one h only please.” It is Japanese Sign Language.

This does not mean that you need to know JSL to order coffee there. Starbucks has thought of this. There are menus you can point at. There are tablets for writing. There are speech-to-text tools. Your drink is called by number on a screen, not by someone shouting your name into the void and hoping you identify spiritually with “Sally.”

The store also has visual design elements connected to sign language. There is artwork. There are signs. Even the uniforms include fingerspelling. The idea is not hidden in the small print. But then again, neither is Starbucks. This is a company that once convinced half the world that “tall” means small, so we must all choose our battles.

Do note, this not a tourist attraction, not a living demonstration of inclusion. It is a normal workplace, a café, a place where people are doing their jobs, probably while someone is taking too long to decide between matcha and caramel. But if sign language is your native language, or one of your languages, it may be a meaningful place to visit. To order coffee in a language that is still too often excluded from ordinary public life. To be in a space where hands moving through the air are not an exception, or a special accommodation, or a small panic at the counter. They are simply how the place works.

I do not know whether the staff use International Sign. So if you use Japanese Sign Language, this store may be especially interesting. If you use another sign language, you can like anybody else communicate via the touch panels.

Other signing cafes in Tokyo are here:

• Social Cafe Sign with Me

  • 4-15-14 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku

• Rendeaf Coffee（a wordplay on Rendezvous）

  • 4-31-11 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku

Finally, you might want to have a look at “A Sign of Affection” , a manga that was later adapted into an anime. It follows Yuki, a university student who has been deaf since birth. She communicates through sign language, text, and lip-reading, depending on the situation and on how cooperative the world feels like being that day.

Credit: Kodansha

The story begins when a foreign traveller asks her for directions in what she assumes is English. Before the encounter can collapse entirely, a young man steps in to help. He catches Yuki’s attention, and from there the series follows her relationships, her university life, and the people entering her world. I should add that I have neither read the manga nor watched the anime - the manga is on my tsundoku pile of books - but the reviews are good. Judge for yourself!

Credit: Shochiku

But Fuji was inscribed as a Cultural World Heritage Site, because its significance lies not only in the mountain itself but in what generations of people have done with it: worshipped it, climbed it, represented it and repeatedly remade it elsewhere. People also feared it, with some justification: Fuji last erupted in 1707. Fuji worship 富士信仰, grew from this mixture of fear, awe and sacred geography. One later expression of it was the Fuji-kō 富士講, organised devotional groups that became especially prominent during the Edo period and turned pilgrimage into a more communal practice.

At first, people worshipped the mountain from a safe distance, which IMHO is a sensible approach to an active volcano. Later, as Fuji became quieter, people began climbing it as a sacred practice. During the Edo period, Fuji-kō groups made this devotion more communal and, to some extent, more accessible. Those who could not climb the real mountain could climb a small Fuji-shaped mound in town and feel connected with the real one.

This long history also helps explain why Fuji appears everywhere in Japanese visual culture, including in the painted murals inside sentō (public baths). Fuji has spent centuries being reproduced far away from Fuji. You are naked, slightly overheated, and staring at Mount Fuji. And so, in honour of yesterday’s Mountain Day, let me offer you a mountain souvenir: blue Mount Fuji onigiri nori.

It fits neatly into the long tradition of making Fuji appear in unexpected places. This Fuji is not on the wall of a public bath, or on a tacky souvenir, but wrapped around rice. The question, of course, is whether this is a genuinely good souvenir or merely something that photographs well once for a couple of Instagram likes.

Credit: Phonet

Onigiri are rice balls, and nori is seaweed. The product that went on sale yesterday - which I have not tried, also because it is too blue for my personal comfort - uses a seaweed-style sheet coloured with a natural pigment derived from spirulina ( dried biomass of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that can be consumed by humans and animals). Wrap it around a triangle of white rice and, depending on the shape of your rice ball, the rice becomes the snow-covered peak of Mount Fuji.

For this pilgrimage, all you really need is rice, said blue wrapping. The flavour? Rather than aiming for blue-raspberry panic, the sheet is seasoned with white dashi and mirin, giving it a savoury, umami flavour that makes sense with rice (and that also means it’s not vegan). This is helpful, because the human brain is scared of blue food (at least mine is).

Credit: Fujisan Product (also available online here)

There is, of course, an entire industry devoted to turning Mount Fuji into something you can take home. In Yamanashi, put Fuji on a box and you are already halfway towards an omiyage. Fujisan Product, the company behind this particular blue mountain, has made something of a speciality of taking the idea unusually literally: its catalogue includes blue Fuji curry, beer, chocolate, cake and a Mount Fuji-shaped Baumkuchen. Some novelties seem to have disappeared; but others settle in and become part of Yamanashi’s souvenir landscape. The blue Fuji Baumkuchen, launched in 2023, is still being sold, and I can quite easily imagine the nori joining it. Launching it on Mountain Day (yesterday!) certainly does not hurt.

What I do like about both the Baumkuchen and this onigiri is that they do something many Fuji souvenirs do not: they actually become Mount Fuji. Plenty of biscuits, chocolates and boxes simply have the mountain printed on them. Here, the object itself is three-dimensional. Wrap it around a triangle of white rice and the exposed rice becomes Fuji’s snow-covered peak.

There is a pleasing historical accident in that shape. One of the oldest known pieces of cooked rice resembling an onigiri, excavated from a Yayoi-period site in present-day Ishikawa Prefecture, is roughly triangular or conical. There are theories linking triangular rice offerings to older beliefs about sacred mountains, although the evidence is difficult to pin down. More certainly, onigiri were never historically one uniform shape: regional forms included triangles, rounds and barrels. What made the neat triangle seem almost inevitable was mass-produced onigiri, especially the convenience-store version and its ingenious packaging. Convenience stores did not invent triangular rice balls; they helped turn one form into the national visual shorthand for “onigiri.” (and you all know the emoji🍙) Which means that the blue Fuji wrapper works because two visual clichés happen to overlap perfectly: Fuji is a triangle, and, to contemporary eyes, so is an onigiri.

As a souvenir, this is therefore slightly more interesting than another packet with Fuji printed on the front. It is something you have to finish yourself. The product is sold at selected michi-no-eki and souvenir shops in Yamanashi as well as online here; it is not something I would order from abroad even if international shipping were available. The better version of this souvenir is to bring it home and make it.

But it if you can cook rice, enjoy onigiri, and like a souvenir with a minor assembly requirement. It would also make an excellent present for someone who grew up eating rice and happens to love mountaineering, which is admittedly quite a specific demographic but surely exists. It is light, easy to pack, and funny enough for children, picnics, or a dinner table where someone will appreciate being served an edible mountain.

Skip it if blue food already makes you suspicious. Nature rarely serves dinner in printer-cartridge tones, and when it does, one should ask questions (unless you play Zelda maybe). Also skip it if you are looking for something genuinely traditional, or if you want a souvenir that can sit forgotten in a cupboard for six months. This is contemporary Yamanashi souvenir design, not an ancient Fuji delicacy. And that distinction matters: the tradition here is not blue nori. The tradition is the seemingly inexhaustible urge to turn Mount Fuji into something portable.

Credit: Sumida Hokusai Museum

If blue food is not for you, maybe “Commemorating a Decade: Hokusai and Hiroshige — Two Maestros, Two Visions of Mount Fuji” is - until August 30, this exhibition at Sumida’s Hokusai Museum shows all kind of Mt. Fujis.

The characters can be flat, the dialogue too explanatory, and the lighting sometimes makes everyone look as if they are being interviewed by a vending machine. There are exceptions. As you may have read, I really really liked Hot Spot. I also really really like quite a few of Kudō Kankurō’s series, especially Amachan because he understands chaos, timing, and people being ridiculous in ways that feel almost medically accurate (I bought the DVD box-set, when I still had a DVD player). And then there was VIVANT. Which I also liked. Against my own habits. If you generally bounce off Japanese television dramas for roughly the same reasons I do, VIVANT is therefore quite a useful test case.

What made this particularly strange in Japan was that VIVANT was not a Netflix prestige drama imported into the television system from somewhere else. It was a TBS Sunday Theatre drama: old-fashioned, Sunday-at-nine, everyone-watches-the-same-thing television, suddenly behaving as if someone had handed it an international thriller budget.

Credit: TBS

VIVANT begins with Nogi Yūsuke, a seemingly unimpressive employee at a major trading company. He is the kind of man who looks as if he apologizes to automatic doors. Then a huge mistaken money transfer sends him to Balka, a fictional republic in Central Asia to retrieve the mistakenly sent 90 million USD. Here, a corporate problem very quickly stops being a corporate problem. A police officer, a desert and danger. And people who may or may not be who they say they are. And suddenly the unimpressive employee drama has turned into an international thriller with spies, terrorism, national secrets, and the deep Japanese television belief that no matter how global the conspiracy becomes, someone still has to file the paperwork.

Part of the reason VIVANT became so popular is that it looked expensive in a way Japanese TV dramas often do not. Deserts. Large-scale overseas shoots (2 months in Mongolia). And actors who could carry entire dramas by themselves all standing in the same scene. There are not many things left that we all experience simultaneously. Weather. Politics. The World Cup, occasionally. But here, the pleasure of weekly speculation did help as well, because you never knew. Who is lying? Who is loyal? Who is secretly competent? Who has the emotional damage required for this plot? The series gave viewers something to discuss, at a time when television can no longer assume that everyone is watching the same programme at the same time, and somehow recreated exactly that old weekly rhythm: episode, cliffhanger, seven days of people analysing screenshots and accusing perfectly innocent supporting characters of treason. BS itself now talks about the kōsatsu 考察 boom the first season generated on social media - kōsatsu being the collective sport of analysing clues, inventing theories and becoming deeply suspicious of supporting actors. TBS later put cumulative viewing across the ten episodes, including time-shifted viewing, at more than 60 million. The show also won the 2024 Tokyo Drama Award Grand Prix. I’m not the only person who liked it.

So you might want to check it out. Outside Japan, Netflix is the first place I would check for Season 1; availability varies depending on your location. Also, if sprawling conspiracies, deliberately withheld information and men staring intensely at one another while discussing national security are not your thing, this will probably not convert you.

Credit: TBS

In Japan, it is tied closely to TBS and domestic streaming services, with catch-up options such as TBS FREE and TVer, while U-NEXT has the exclusive subscription streaming rights in Japan (because apparently I needed another streaming subscription). The timing is good, or dangerous, depending on your life choices: the second season started just the other week, on July 26, 2026. Which means this is either the perfect moment to catch up, or the perfect moment to lose several evenings and call it cultural research.

Also, how cute are these VIVANT Machibōke gachapon figures. ¥500 for the privilege of discovering whether fate has given you Nogi, Nozaki, Kaoru, Kurosu, Nokor or Drum. I think I might want Nozaki, although in my head this is simply the tiny Abe Hiroshi. Or Drum. Or Nogi. I don’t know…

Credit: Bandai Namco

I could not resist and actually bought the VIVANT ‘Top Secret’ gummy candy at FamilyMart. Quite yummy, annoyingly. Much more to buy at FamilyMart… I also got the VIVANT Imabari towel, annoyingly.

Credit: Family Mart

But this does not mean the pillow is useless. It simply has a character. Many useful things do. For side sleeping, it can be just right, because side sleepers need a pillow with a certain height. The space between shoulder and head must be filled somehow, unless the neck is expected to hover politely in mid-air. A good side pillow keeps the neck in line with the spine, not bent upward like a surprised swan and not drooping downward like it has given up. This is where the kaku-makura can work beautifully. It can also be placed under the curve of the neck as a small support. Not quite a pillow, more a quiet assistant. For a nap, a short rest, a desk-break neck stretch, or a small moment of recovery after too much civilized sitting, it can be surprisingly pleasant. For all-night back sleeping with imperial ambition, perhaps less so. Some objects are not wrong. They are just honest.

Credit: Igusa Kotatsu.com

The real charm, though, is the igusa. Igusa immediately says Japanese summer. You do not look at this pillow and think of February. You think of heat, open windows, tatami rooms, and the ancient human struggle against humidity. Igusa absorbs and releases moisture, so it feels dry and cool against the skin. In a humid Japanese summer, this is not a decorative detail. This is survival, but in a tasteful size.

And then there is the smell. Anyone who has ever stepped into a newly laid tatami room knows it. Green, dry, faintly sweet, and strangely calming. It is the smell of a room that has its life together, even if you do not. A small igusa pillow will not turn your apartment into a forest temple. Let us remain reasonable. But it can make one corner of daily life feel cooler, drier, and more composed. It brings a little Japanese interior into a chair, sofa, study, bedroom, or rented apartment that otherwise has no intention of becoming a tearoom. Igusa can also help regulate humidity and absorb odors. Again, not magic. Just a very competent plant.

Credit: Ikehiko

This is why an igusa cushion or small kaku-makura makes a good souvenir from Japan. It is light, compact, practical, and carries something of everyday Japanese life with it. Not postcard Japan. Lived-in Japan. Summer rooms, tatami scent, afternoon naps, sticky weather, and the small victory of not sweating more than necessary. It is especially good for people who like natural materials, traditional crafts, small comforts, or dry skin against a pillow. In summer, this includes most of humanity.

Of course, igusa is a natural material, and natural materials always arrive with tiny conditions. If it stays damp too long, it may grow mold. If it sits in harsh sunlight, it may fade or become brittle. It should be aired regularly and treated as a seasonal object, not as an immortal machine. This is also very Japanese, somehow. Even the pillow has a maintenance philosophy.

So who is it for? It is for people who dislike sweaty pillows, sticky seats, and synthetic summer bedding. It is for people who want a cooler surface without depending entirely on air-conditioning. It is for people who like the smell of tatami, or who want a small piece of that atmosphere in a modern room. It is good for side sleeping, short naps, neck support, desk breaks, car rests, and small rituals of comfort. It will not solve every sleeping problem. It will not fix your life. But as a small, fragrant, practical piece of Japanese summer, it does its job very well.

That would be understandable.

It would also be wrong.

Japan Edition is a shop that just opened in Ginza - and it’s not really selling traditional crafts in the museum-shop sense. What it sells is a sharply edited version of Japanese making, seen through fashion: denim, tailoring, leather, watches, furniture, bonsai, and the kind of clothes that look like “just a jacket” until someone explains the stitching for twenty minutes.

Opened on Ginza’s Namiki-dori by Tokyo Base (their stock might be worth checking out), Japan Edition is a select shop devoted to Japanese craftsmanship, but its centre of gravity is apparel. The focus is less on nostalgia and more on how Japan has absorbed, refined, and occasionally out-obsessed global clothing cultures.

There is Japanese denim from brands such as Fullcount, orSlow, FDMTL, Momotaro Jeans, and Studio D’Artisan. There is military and American casual wear through Buzz Rickson’s, gold, and Tailor Toyo.

There are watches by Seiko, Casio, and Issei Miyake Watch. There is furniture by Tendo Mokko.

There even sell kabuto-helmets, because apparently one cannot live by jeans alone.

The shop itself also knows exactly what it is doing. Designed under the supervision of Kamiya Architects, it borrows from Japanese architectural memory without turning into a theme park. Outside, the denim-coloured tiled roof and lanterns hint at old merchant streets, even if Edo-period merchants probably relied more on noren curtains than lanterns. Inside, the two-floor space uses warm materials and a kura-like atmosphere to create something like a polished storehouse. This is Ginza, after all. Even the warehouse has good lighting.

You also want to come here if you once thought jeans were just jeans, until you followed Derek Guy on your favourite social media platform and suddenly learned about selvedge, dyeing, stitching, fading, looms, and regret. The Ginza flagship also carries special opening items, including collaboration pieces with Yamane Industries. This means there is the added risk of finding something you cannot buy anywhere else, and then having to explain to yourself that it counts as “research.”

In short, Japan Edition is less a traditional craft shop than a fashion and lifestyle space built around Japanese production culture. It brings together clothing, objects, design, and stories of making in one carefully staged environment. For overseas visitors, it offers a more interesting version of “Japanese souvenirs” than another airport keychain. For people living in Japan, it is a reminder that domestic products can still surprise you, even when you thought you had seen everything.

Which is annoying.

But also quite nice.

Japan Edition: 4-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo-to

You may also want to peek at the June 2025 installment with info on flea markets, as well as November 2025, February, April, May, and June 2026. Some of these exhibitions and events are still on. Some events keep coming back. Tokyo does not stop just because a newsletter has moved on.

First don’t miss the rakugo show on August 20th! (drop me a line if you’re in Europe, I’ll give you details for the Europe shows)

Too Hot for Asphalt, Cool Enough for Trees

Ryuichi Sakamoto matters to many people because he made Japanese pop music sound suddenly larger than itself. With Yellow Magic Orchestra, he helped connect postwar Japanese music to synthesizers, computers, art school, irony, and the world outside Japan. As “the Professor,” he moved between pop, film, advertising, activism, and ambient music with suspicious elegance, as if this were a perfectly normal career and not several lives stacked on top of each other. In Yamaguchi, that legacy becomes quietly tangible at Jōeiji, the temple known for Sesshū’s garden, where Sakamoto’s Forest Symphony, created with Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, turns the faint electrical signals of trees into sound. The temple is also part of Google Arts & Culture, which is nice for the sofa, but the real place is well worth the trip, especially in the hot summer months, when sitting still in a garden and listening to trees feels like a reasonable survival strategy. The work is not really a concert. It is more like an agreement between stones, insects, old trees, summer air, and discreet electronics. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is rather the point. Forest Symphony remains on view as part of Yamaguchi Seasonal 2026 until December 6, 2026, so the experience can continue beyond summer, as the garden changes and the trees carry on with their quiet electrical business.

Credit: Jōeiji

Tokyo Tower: Now With Water and Fewer Tears

Tokyo in summer is not hot in the ordinary sense. It is hot in the “why is the air touching me?” sense. Even people from Southeast Asia, who are not exactly beginners when it comes to heat, can find Tokyo’s humidity and temperature a little personal. Now imagine you are a child experiencing it properly for the first time. You step outside and it feels like walking into a sauna, only nobody had the decency to let you take your clothes off first. This is why the “Chibikko Exciting Water Park under Tokyo Tower” makes a surprising amount of sense. It is not a grand resort. It is not a distant theme park that requires three trains, two parental negotiations, and one emotional collapse before lunch. It is right there in the city, just a short walk from Akabanebashi Station, directly under Tokyo Tower, which is already dramatic enough for a small person with wet hair and a melting ice cream. Children can run through pop-up jet fountains, splash around, and throw themselves into the kind of water play that makes Tokyo summer feel less like punishment. After playing, families can still go up Tokyo Tower, eat nearby (Le Pain Quotidien is nearby) and recover their will to live. And perhaps the most merciful part is the price setting: children pay a reasonable fee, while accompanying adults, who are mostly there to watch, carry towels, and prevent disaster, can enter for free.

Credit: Every day life of dad

Cute, Cruel, and Air-Conditioned

Nagano, the illustrator and manga artist behind Chiikawa, did not arrive as a polished corporate character factory product, which is probably part of the point. She seems to have drawn for as long as she can remember, then slowly became known through social media and LINE stickers, especially her earlier character Jibun Tsukkomi Kuma. Then came Chiikawa, who looks, at first glance, like a harmless little creature designed to sell soft toys to people who already own too many soft toys. This is only partly true. Chiikawa is cute, yes. Very cute. Suspiciously cute. But the world around Chiikawa is not exactly paradise. The characters work, fail exams, worry about money, fight strange enemies, eat small comforting snacks, and try to survive a system that is never fully explained and rarely fair. In other words, it is fantasy, but with paperwork. That is probably why so many people love it. Children can enjoy the round faces and tiny voices. Adults can look at Chiikawa and think, “Yes, I too have been defeated by society and then revived by food.” Now Chiikawa has made the jump to the cinema with “Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island”, the first theatrical anime film based on Nagano’s work. It adapts the much-loved Siren arc, which means there is cuteness, danger, mystery, friendship, and probably several moments where everyone in the audience wonders why something so small is making them feel so emotionally exposed. It is also, very practically, a good summer activity. Your will to live may be lightly grilled, but cinemas are of course air-conditioned. So seeing Chiikawa on the big screen is not only cultural participation. It is heat survival with popcorn, even when you don’t understand Japanese.

The Civilized Way to Melt

Shaved ice is, of course, not some cute little Japanese summer invention, although Japan does do a very convincing job of behaving as if it invented summer. Across East and Southeast Asia, shaved ice is a serious matter, a proper culinary tradition, and often the only civilized answer to heat that makes you question your life choices. Korea has bingsu, Taiwan has Tsuah-ping/ xuehua bing. Further south, there are cendol, ais kacang, and many other glorious constructions involving shaved ice, beans, jellies, coconut milk, palm fruit, corn, ice cream, and the quiet confidence that dessert should also be architecture. So yes, when Tokyo turns into a humid waiting room for the afterlife, you could buy another Starbucks iced latte. You could stand in front of a convenience-store freezer and pretend a simple vanilla ice cream will save you. Or you could go for the real thing: shaved ice. And this summer, the real thing has gathered in Ginza, at Matsuya Ginza’s Kakigōri Collection Ginza, which is basically a pilgrimage site for people who understand that ice can be lunch if it is expensive and beautiful enough. Famous shaved-ice shops from across Japan appear there in a rotating line-up, including places people would normally travel to, queue for, and then describe afterwards as if they had survived a small natural disaster. Here, instead, you can eat them indoors, in air-conditioning, directly connected to Ginza Station, which is frankly cheating, but in the best possible way. From late July through September, different specialists take turns, bringing seasonal fruit purées, handmade syrups, carefully balanced toppings, and those soft, pillowy towers of ice that make convenience-store popsicles look like a cry for help. It is still shaved ice. But it is also craft, weather management, cultural education, and a very elegant excuse to sit down in Ginza and eat something that melts faster than your willpower.

Credit: Matsuya Ginza

Credit: Peach John

The founder is said to have liked the sound of the letter P and looked for a name beginning with it. This led to “peach.” Then peach led to Momotarō. Taro became John. And Peach John (now part of Wacoal) was born. It is not a name that improves if one interrogates it for too long. It sounds nice and soft, is easy to remember. And because it contains “peach,” it also has a slightly sensual softness, whether officially intended or not. The pink-film association is (allegedly?) not the formal origin, but as an atmospheric misunderstanding, it is not entirely wrong either. The name is basically Momotarō dressed up as something sweet, feminine, and just grown-up enough to be sold in a lingerie shop.

Credit: Peach John

Peach John is known for always having been quite good at turning slightly absurd ideas into things people actually want to buy. The “Masterpiece Bra” series is a good example: Famous works of art, but as bras. Van Gogh, Vermeer, Klimt, Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Chōjū-giga, and other celebrated images are translated into lingerie. Yup it sounds like one of those souvenirs you find in Narita airport, somewhere between plastic sushi keychains, and a Hello Kitty that has clearly seen too much. Yes, indeed it certainly has tourist appeal. When the motifs come from Japanese art, such as ukiyo-e, Chōjū-giga, or Fūjin and Raijin, the message is quick to understand.

But it would be too simple to call it just a souvenir. Peach John presents the series as a design bra line, and each new release tends to become the kind of thing people share online because it is both pretty and slightly unbelievable. It also speaks to domestic customers: art lovers, fashion lovers, collectors of limited editions, and people who like objects with a story. Western motifs such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Irises, or The Starry Night are maybe not really Japan souvenirs. They are for people who like art, or at least like the idea of wearing a museum in a place where museums are not usually worn.

Credit: Peach John

The price, around 4,500 yen, also tells us something. About the same as an H&M bra. To go from 2D to 3D, the images of course had to be transformed through embroidery, lace, asymmetry, attached motifs, and small decorative decisions that suggest someone had a meeting about how best to turn art history into underwire. The result is …a small private exhibition. Very private, in fact.

That is where the charm of the series lies. It is playful, but not lazy. The references are recognizable, but the designs still work as lingerie. As you can see, some are bright and cheerful, like Sunflowers. Others are …dreamy (is that the right word?), like The Starry Night. Some are dramatic, like Fūjin and Raijin (sure you’ll be protected with this bra!). Others, such as Chōjū-giga, are already so full of animals behaving badly that becoming underwear feels less like a decline and more like a career move. The series understands something important: art does not always have to be approached in silence, with serious shoes and a museum map. Sometimes it can be embroidered onto a bra and still remain art. Or at least remain very committed to the attempt.

Credit: Peach John

So the “Masterpiece Bra” is best understood not simply as a souvenir, but as Japanese topic consumption with international reach. It is for people who enjoy wearing something unexpected. It is practical, technically. But practicality is clearly not the whole point. The point is the small private lift in mood that comes from knowing that under an ordinary Uniqlo sweater, one might be wearing Van Gogh, Klimt, a thunder god, or a pair of frolicking medieval animals. I am still not completely sure whether a bra is a good souvenir. It sure is difficult to display on a shelf. But for an art historian, well, it might after all be a very good souvenir.

Big cities are exciting. They are also loud, bright, crowded, confusing, and full of people who walk as if they have a train to catch, because they do. For many children, this is tiring. For autistic children and teenagers, or children with sensory sensitivities, it can be much more than tiring. It can become too much.

This is called sensory overload.

Sensory overload means the brain is getting more information than it can sort. Sounds, lights, smells, movement, touch, signs, announcements, people, ticket gates, suitcase wheels, perfume, fried food, flashing screens, and one parent saying “hurry up” can all arrive at the same time. None of those information bits waits its turn.

For a person without strong sensory difficulties, the brain usually does a useful little trick. It decides what matters. The train announcement matters. The man coughing nearby does not. The smell from the bakery is nice, but not urgent. The light is bright, but survivable. Life continues.

However, during sensory overload, that filter stops doing its job. Everything feels important. Everything feels close. Everything feels now.

At that point, the child is not being dramatic. They are not being rude. They are not 'making a scene.' Their nervous system is flooded.

A good way to imagine it is a computer with too many tabs open. Then more tabs open. Then a video starts playing somewhere, but nobody knows where. Then the computer freezes. Nobody blames the computer for having a bad attitude. They give it space to recover. Children sometimes need that space too.

Tokyo and Osaka are wonderful places to visit. They are also advanced-level cities. Shanghai or Seoul families may find this more familiar. A family from Small Town Idaho or Badensische Kleinstadt may feel they have accidentally entered a transportation-themed video game with no tutorial. The city is manageable with preparation

Stations such as Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Tokyo, or Osaka’s Umeda, Namba, or Shinsaibashi are more than stations - they are underground cities. (There’s a reason my Shinjuku station article is one of my most popular ones). These station have layers and rules. And exits with names like “Central East South Gate,” which sounds helpful until there are four of them.

For a child with sensory sensitivities, a major station can become a perfect storm. Loud announcements overlap. Trains arrive. People move quickly. Signs flash. Lights glare. Routes split. Parents look at maps. Someone says, “It’s easy, we just change here,” which is usually when things become impossible. The goal is not to avoid the city. The goal is to survive the city with less damage. The first rule is simple: do not wait until the child is overwhelmed and has lost the ability to cope — what is sometimes called a meltdown. A quiet pause before overload is much easier than a rescue mission after overload.

Credit: Kabin Lab

Look for calm down or cool down spaces. These are small, protected areas where people can step away from noise, light, crowds, and social pressure. They are not luxury rooms. They are not “special treatment.” They are a practical tool. Like toilets, elevators, or benches, they exist because bodies have limits.

Credit: Takamatsu Airport

In Tokyo, some major public places now provide these spaces. Haneda Airport has calm down areas in its terminals. Minato City Office has a partition-style calm down space in the main building, though visitors may need to ask staff. Ariake Arena has dedicated spaces on several public concourse levels. The Tokyo National Museum also provides a sensory map, which can help families understand where a visit may feel quieter, louder, brighter, or more crowded. This kind of information is gold as it prevents everyone from crying near a vending machine.

Credit: Calm Spot Map

There are also online resources, including the above Calm Spot map, that can help families check possible rest points before leaving the hotel. This is especially useful because the moment you need a quiet place is usually the exact moment nobody wants to search twelve websites in Japanese. Calm Spot Map is not a collection of small warnings and small hopes. Users can share information about places they have actually visited: whether the lights are harsh, whether the noise is manageable, whether there are crowds, smells, or somewhere to sit and recover. This matters because official websites often tell you where the toilets are, but not whether the café sounds like ten blenders fighting a printer. For people with sensory sensitivities, that missing information can decide whether an outing feels possible or impossible. The strength of the Calm Spot Map is that it turns someone else’s “I managed to go there” into another family’s “Maybe we can try.” ♪

If a station or department store does not have a dedicated calm down space (more than often the case, because, well, limited space - and Tokyo being Tokyo), you can ask staff. A useful phrase is: “My child has sensory sensitivity and is feeling unwell because of the crowds. Is there a quiet place where we can rest for a few minutes?” (which probably most station staff do not understand on first try so), in Japanese, you can show them this sentence:

This does not guarantee a perfect solution. But it often helps. Staff may be able to guide you to an office area, a quieter corner, a first-aid room, or a less crowded route. Big cities can be harsh. Individual staff members are often very very kind.

One person who has helped make these invisible difficulties more visible in Japan is Kato Jiei, the founder of Crystal Road Co., Ltd. and director of the Kankaku Kabin Kenkyujo, or translated, the Sensory Sensitivity Research Institute. Kato himself experiences sensory sensitivities, including hearing, smell, taste, and touch. He founded the institute in 2018, while still a teenager, to help society understand that sensory sensitivity is not fussiness, weakness, or bad manners. It is a real barrier.

The institute works on awareness, research, sensory-friendly products, sensitivity marks, and advice for facilities that want to create calm down spaces or sensory rooms. Its message is practical and humane: not every place can be perfect for every person, but every person should have at least one usable option.

Before visiting a big station area, it can help to look at the map not only for the shortest route, but for the quietest escape route. The area within about 200 meters of a major station is often the busiest: shopping buildings, offices, hotels, buses, taxis, restaurants, crowds, signs, lights, and constant announcements. Around 400 meters out, the atmosphere may begin to soften, depending on the neighborhood. After that, you may start to find residential streets, smaller parks, local cafés, shrines, temples, or just ordinary boring streets. Boring is excellent. Boring is a gift. When traveling with a child who may become overwhelmed, mark one or two boring places in advance.

This rule of course has exceptions. In places like Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Umeda, or Namba, walking in the wrong direction may simply move you from one chaos zone to another. In Ikebukuro, for example, walking toward Sunshine City may not calm things down. It may just introduce a new boss level. In those areas, choose side streets carefully, walk away from the main shopping flow, and look for residential edges, parks, museums, hotel lobbies, or public facilities. The point is not to walk far. The point is to walk away from the machine.

That is a very good standard for travel too. Parents do not need to make Tokyo easy. Tokyo is not easy. Tokyo is Tokyo. Osaka is also very much Osaka. But parents can make the day more possible.

Choose one big activity instead of three. Travel outside rush hour when you can. Bring headphones, sunglasses, snacks, water, familiar objects, and a plan for leaving early. Check station maps before arriving (read this on navigating Shinjuku station, the same really applies for most big stations). Also, decide on a meeting point early on if you must part. Find the exit before everyone is tired. Treat quiet time as part of the itinerary, not as failure.

And most importantly, believe the child before the child has to prove it.

If they say it is too loud, it is too loud.
If they say the lights hurt, the lights hurt.
If they stop answering, they may not be ignoring you. Some children go very quiet when overwhelmed. That stillness is not indifference. It may mean they are working very hard just to stay present.
If they need to leave, leaving may be the brave thing.

The city will still be there tomorrow.

That is the nice thing about very large cities. They are exhausting, but they rarely disappear overnight.

(okay I went off a bit too much with this one, but I just love this pen too much)

May I have the honour of commending to your notice an article of the humblest outward pretensions, yet of very uncommon merit: the Uni-ball Signo 0.38; a pen so modest in aspect that the uninitiated purchaser might pass it by without a second glance, while the person already acquainted with its virtues would sooner mislay an appointment than be without one.

I possess two of these instruments myself, and, instead of pursuing the novelties with which the stationer’s shelves are so liberally furnished, I merely provide them, as occasion requires, with fresh refills. This, I venture to submit, is praise of the most practical and therefore the most sincere kind. For there are objects which delight the eye for an afternoon, and there are objects which, by a quieter excellence, earn a permanent place in the hand. The Signo 0.38 belongs decidedly to the latter company.

It makes no showy appeal to the passer-by. It is not arrayed in lacquered splendour, nor does it glitter with unnecessary ornament. It advances no claim to nobility of appearance. Rather, with the admirable patience of a well-bred servant, it waits until called upon; and once it has been tried upon the page, further argument becomes quite unnecessary.

The Uni-ball Signo 0.38 is a fine gel pen, yet not one of those excessively attenuated instruments by which the hand feels condemned to embroidery rather than writing. Its line, being 0.38 millimetres, is delicate without becoming punitive. It is especially fitted for small letters, diary entries, crowded notebooks, densely inhabited pages, kanji of unreasonable complexity, and those marginal corrections which appear after the writer, somewhat too late, has been visited by a superior thought.

Credit: Freconet.com

It writes with a most agreeable smoothness. It does not bleed, at least not in my own experience after more than ten years of use. Most pleasingly of all, it possesses a slight crispness upon the page, by means of which one’s handwriting may acquire an air of composure, discipline, and intellectual respectability somewhat beyond that which the person holding the pen can invariably guarantee.

As a souvenir, it is small, useful, inexpensive, and Japanese in the quietest and most persuasive manner. It does not announce itself with scenic grandeur or ornamental excess. It does not cry out to be admired. Rather, it offers, with becoming restraint, the simple explanation: “Ah. So this is why Japanese stationery enjoys its reputation.”

I can attest that it serves both Roman letters and the Japanese writing systems very handsomely. More than that, I strongly suspect it is not the sort of souvenir destined to languish upon a shelf among decorative objects of doubtful employment. It will find its way into a bag, a notebook, a desk drawer, or the pocket of some practical person, and there discharge its duties faithfully, quietly, and without complaint.

@sui1030「それ、どこのペン？」とよく聞かれるので紹介してみました🤗 宛名書きやノートの見出し、メッセージカードなどを書くときに大活躍のおすすめのペンです。 ⬇️動画で使用したペン⬇️ ○三菱鉛筆 ユニボール シグノ 太字 1.0mm （カラーは動画に登場した 黒 / 赤 / ブルーブラック / ホワイト / 金 / 銀 のほか、青もあります） ￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣ ■新刊『100の気持ちで選ぶ 美文字練習帳』6/16発売 100種類の感情、約300種類のフレーズから、その時の気持ちにぴったりの言葉を選んで綴る。 類書はなく、まったく新しいタイプのペン字練習帳です📖 ̖́- 180°パタンと開く仕様で書き込みやすい✨（プロフィールより予約受付中！） ■『365日の美文字練習BOOK』 1日5分。毎日違うワードで楽しみながら、書くことを習慣化したい方へ向けた一冊。 180°パタンと開く仕様✨（第５刷重版・ベストセラー） ■『モテ字の法則 suiのペン字練習帳』 皆さんから寄せられた「苦手な漢字」200文字を厳選！一文字一文字をじっくり解説。部首等、部分ごとの形の取り方を理論的に学べます🍀読み物としても◎（第５刷重版） ⁡ 本の詳細はプロフィールリンクよりご覧いただけます😊

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There is, moreover, a deeper propriety in this pen, for it pays a small tribute to what a friend once called one of the most cognitively and physically demanding writing systems still in daily use. Japanese is not simply written down; it must be assembled. The writer moves between kanji, hiragana, katakana, and, upon occasion, Roman letters, while attending all the while to stroke order, balance, spacing, proportion, and the small domestic tragedy of discovering halfway through a character that the hand has taken a course the mind did not authorize.

Many Japanese people may read a kanji perfectly, type it without hesitation, and yet pause when asked to reproduce it by hand. This is not idleness, nor is it carelessness. It is the difference between recognition and resurrection. To see a character is one undertaking; to summon it from memory, stroke by stroke, and place it neatly within its appointed space is quite another. In such a drama, the pen is no mere accessory. It is an accomplice.

This is why a pen such as the Signo 0.38 is particularly at home in Japan. A kanji must fit within its invisible square. Should the line be too thick, the character becomes a crowded lodging-house with no air. Should the pen be too slippery, the strokes lose their bones. Should it be too scratchy, the writer may be forgiven for beginning to question the justice of existence itself.

The 0.38 line offers just enough precision, just enough command, and just enough firmness to render small writing legible and composed, whether one writes kanji, kana, or Roman letters. As a souvenir, it carries with it an entire culture of handwriting; yet it does so without flourish or proclamation. It does not bid the world behold civilization. It merely permits a person to write one neat line, look at it with quiet satisfaction, and think:

“Oh. This works.”

Out of the 955 facilities listed for greater Tokyo on sauna-ikitai.com, 865 do let in women, or have “ladies days”, but ratios might not be 50:50 for all. The reason is historical first. The older Japanese sauna facilities developed during the postwar period of rapid economic growth, especially from the 1960s onward. They were not originally designed as the stylish wellness spaces for couples, tourists, or women on a quiet solo afternoon they are now, but rather built around the life of male office workers. Those men who missed the last train or were on a business trip, or had drunk too much after work and needed somewhere cheaper than a hotel. Or somebody who wanted a bath, a nap, a television, a beer, and perhaps the illusion that his company had not consumed his entire soul.

Credit: Eiga Shuppansha 映画出版社 - 『新映画』1951年7月号。発行所：映画出版社。

These facilities were often connected to capsule hotels, bathhouses, rest spaces, or entertainment districts. Their customers were assumed to be men because public life, late-night work culture, and business travel were also imagined mainly through men. So the architecture followed the assumption: One entrance, one changing room, one bathing area, one sleeping area, one stream of customers, all male. It was not necessarily a grand ideological decision. It was more practical than that, and therefore harder to undo.

Credit: Kyoto’s Shokokuji Temple

This matters because buildings remember. Even when society changes, pipes do not become progressive. A facility built for one gender cannot simply put up a cheerful sign saying “Everyone welcome” and call it diversity. In Japan, saunas are usually part of bathing culture, and bathing normally means being naked. That changes everything. A mixed-gender sauna in swimwear is possible (a total of 85 places in Tokyo), but old-style Japanese sauna, with nude bathing, changing rooms, washing areas, baths, toilets, rest zones, and sleeping spaces, cannot become co-ed just by adjusting its marketing.

There is also a larger background here. Traditional public bathing in Tokyo is not exactly an expanding industry with endless renovation budgets lying around in a drawer next to the hair dryers. The number of ordinary public bathhouses has been falling for decades. Tokyo had 2,687 public bathhouses in 1968. By 2023, it had 444. By 2024, 430. The one in my neighbourhood just closed down. Of course this does not mean bathing culture has disappeared. It means the old infrastructure is shrinking, aging, and being asked to survive in a city where land, fuel, repairs, and staff all cost money.

Credit: Asahi Shinbun

That matters for the sauna question. When people ask why an old men-only sauna does not simply become co-ed, the word “simply” is doing a heroic amount of unpaid labour. Many of these places are not choosing between “old-fashioned” and “modern” in some clean abstract sense. They are choosing between keeping the current business alive and taking on a renovation that may be physically impossible, financially irrational, or both. For a new luxury sauna, this can be planned from the beginning. The architect draws two sets of facilities. The investor sighs and pays. The brochure says “inclusive.” Everyone looks relaxed in linen. But for an older sauna in a narrow urban building, the situation is different. There may not be enough floor space. The plumbing may be in the wrong place. The bathing area may be impossible to divide without destroying the whole business model. Adding a second complete set of facilities can mean losing beds, lockers, baths, rest areas, or revenue-generating space. At some point, the beautiful idea of co-ed access meets the wall. Literally. A concrete wall. Behind it, pipes.

This is why many older institutions remain men-only. Not because the law forces them to be men-only directly, but because becoming co-ed would require them to meet a different and much heavier set of structural requirements. If they cannot afford the renovation, or if the building physically cannot support it, staying men-only becomes the easiest legal and economic solution. It is less a proud tradition than a locked-in consequence of past design.

There is also the question of customer expectations. Traditional Japanese sauna users often expect to be naked, to move freely between bath, sauna, cold bath, washing area, and rest space, and not to think too much about how they look. This is the whole point. If a facility changes to a co-ed model, it may gain new customers, but it may also lose the old ones. And older customers are not always eager to be told that the place where they have been quietly sweating for thirty years is now a lifestyle concept.

Credit: Paradise

So, newer sauna facilities are different. Or can be. But there are still fewer female sauna users I think (no data to be found). Since the recent sauna boom, many places have been designed for women, couples, tourists, private bookings, and mixed groups from the beginning. Some use private rooms. Some divide time slots by gender. Some sell an experience rather than a bath. These places are not trapped by old architecture in the same way. They can build the new social reality directly into the floor plan.

So this is the larger pattern: many older Japanese saunas are men-only not simply because of attitude, but because of history, architecture, nudity, regulation, and money. Paradise in Tamachi is useful because it shows what happens when one old bathhouse building is not demolished, but translated.

Credit: Paradise

soooo, long intro short…. May I introduce you to a bath-house turned sauna, “Paradise” in Tamachi. It is interesting because it shows both sides of this story at once: the weight of old bathing infrastructure, and the newer attempt to rework it without pretending the building has no past. It has already lived several lives, which is more than can be said for many buildings in Tokyo, where memory is often demolished before lunch. It began as Manzai-yu, a local public bathhouse said to have served the Mita neighbourhood for around ninety years. It was the kind of place people went because they needed a bath, because the neighbourhood needed a bath, and because daily life is held together by such ordinary infrastructure. After Manzai-yu closed down, in 2016, it was reborn as Bunpuku, a sentō izakaya that turned the old bathhouse interior into a drinking space, because apparently even a bathtub in Tokyo can have a second career. Then, in 2022, the building was renovated again and reopened as Paradise. Parts of the old bathhouse structure remain: the sense of height, the tiled surfaces, the traces of a place once divided into men’s and women’s baths. But the building has been translated into a new language. The bones are old sentō. The skin is contemporary sauna.

Credit: Travel Spot App

The sauna itself is a good example of how Tokyo likes to modernize things without entirely admitting that it is being sentimental. Paradise is clean, efficient, stylish, and very aware of how people now talk about “totonou” as if it were both a physical condition and a minor religious experience. The main sauna area offers the familiar cycle of heat, water, and rest, while private sauna spaces on the second-floor balcony allow visitors to withdraw into something more personal and controlled. The facility is modern in all the expected ways: cashless payment, good amenities, polite staff, long opening hours, and a comparatively open attitude toward tattoos and foreign visitors. Yet it does not feel like a generic wellness box. The old bathhouse is still there underneath. That is what gives the place its charm. It is not simply a new sauna built to look nostalgic. It is a former neighbourhood bathhouse that has been persuaded, with wood, lighting, and good branding, to become fashionable.

And yes, while Paradise is men-only on most days, on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of each month, the arrangement flips. Men are not allowed in. The building becomes ladies-only. Equality, Tokyo-style: not always simultaneous, but at least scheduled.

The amulet comes as a card and two small stickers. You can put them on a computer, smartphone, tablet, or any other device that has already caused you emotional damage. In this sense, it is spiritual protection, but also a very small cybersecurity policy. Of course, the amulet will not remove malware. It will not update your firewall. It will not stop you from clicking on an attachment called “invoice_final_really_final.zip.” The gods are kind, but they are not your system administrator. This is probably why people like the amulet so much. It lives in that strange human place between belief, joke, habit, anxiety, and the hope that somebody, somewhere, is watching the server.

Strictly speaking, the blessing is for computer-related trouble, not physical viruses. This is important. It is not a medical mask. It is not a vaccination. It is not a good reason to lick a train handle in Shinjuku and say, “It is fine, Kanda Myojin protects me.” The shrine may take practical hygiene measures, but the IT amulet is about information security. Its enemies are data leaks, bugs, system failures, and printer problems so dark that even atheists begin to speak softly to the universe.

Credit: Kanda Myōjin

Does it work? That depends on what we mean by work. If we mean, “Does it function as antivirus software?” then no. That would be a miracle, but also a very specific one. If we mean, “Does it make the person sitting in front of the machine calmer, more careful, and slightly less alone in the face of digital chaos?” then yes, probably. Humans are not logical machines. This is unfortunate, because they operate machines that are also not logical machines. That is modern office life.

For people doing high-pressure work, such as interpreting, data modelling, accounting, or preparing delicate calculations, a system problem is not only a technical problem. It becomes noise in the head. It sits there. It eats attention. It whispers, “What if everything disappears?” A small sticker on a laptop saying “safety protection” may create the feeling that some measure has been taken. A measure involving faith, irony, and adhesive. And who knows, it may help. The amulet also works as a reminder. You see it on your laptop, and for one tiny second your brain remembers security. You check the file name. You save the document. You think before sending the email. You do not paste confidential data into a suspicious website just because it has a clean interface and a friendly blue button. This is not dramatic magic. There is no thunder, no smoke, no god descending from the cloud, although “the cloud” would be appropriate here. It is just a pause. But many disasters are prevented by pauses. Civilization may be nothing more than a long series of people not pressing send immediately.

Credit: Kanda Myōjin

There is also the deeper comfort of admitting that not everything can be controlled. People who love logic suffer especially badly from illogical failures. Freezing OS, overheating hardware, Zoom updating itself at the exact moment when a meeting begins… A perfect workflow collapses because one cable, somewhere, has decided to become an individual. At such moments, reason reaches the border of its little country. Beyond that border, there is tea, swearing, and sometimes an amulet.

So no, the Kanda Myojin IT amulet is not a program, backup or substitute for two-factor authentication, password discipline, version control, encryption, or simply not doing stupid things. It is indeed a psychological backup though. As a small anchor for security awareness, it is surprisingly practical. As a joke that is also sincere, it is very Japanese. As a religious object for people who fear system failure more than ghosts, it is perfect.

In the end, the question is not only whether the amulet works. The question is whether having it there makes you work better. If it makes you calmer, more careful, and less likely to panic when the screen goes black, then it has already done something useful. Not every blessing needs to be dramatic. Sometimes divine protection is just a small sticker on a laptop, quietly reminding you to save the file.

The main customers seem to always have been women in their twenties and thirties, especially working women who want a hobby, a skill, a change of mood, or the sense that they are doing something useful after work besides doomscrolling on the train. There are also brides-to-be, newlyweds, bread people, cake people, and people who say they are “just doing it for fun” with the intense seriousness of someone about to laminate a recipe card. ABC Cooking Studio’s image is cheerful, clean, feminine, and a little aspirational. Not quite a professional cooking school. I would say it is more like a second kitchen where someone else has done the shopping. Yes, men also attend, as do couples, students, and older learners, but the brand still carries that slightly glossy “working woman improves her life” feeling. Which, in Japan, is practically an entire industry.

Credit: ABC Cooking Travel

I do recommend their classes if you live here and want to learn how to use local ingredients. Or impress your in-laws. Yes, I know. Most of my readers do not travel to Japan to become a Japanese office worker or homemaker. But you might want to learn a Japanese dish or two without entering a full unpaid apprenticeship under a silent master of simmered vegetables. For visitors and English speakers, ABC is offering lessons where you can learn Japanese dishes in English or with English support. These are half-day experiences rather than regular long-term membership courses, and they may include everyone’s favourite sushi, or other things that look impressive but do not yet require you to have opinions about regional miso. The point is to make something recognizable, pretty, and edible, while someone gently guides you through the process and prevents the temari sushi from becoming a philosophical crisis. So yes, it is possible to learn some Japanese cooking there without first passing an exam in Japanese kitchen vocabulary. A mercy.

Now, a small note from the present. Their YouTube channel, if we want to call it that, seems to be rather dormant. They do have a high TripAdvisor rating, so apparently the actual humans who went there came out happy and not merely holding a decorative certificate. The half-day sushi lesson seems like a fun option. At the moment, I cannot find many clearly listed English lessons, so my guess is that these may mainly be arranged for larger groups or via tours. In other words: possible, but maybe not something you book in three clicks while standing on the Yamanote Line. If you’re planning to come with a group or do some yummy team bonding - probably a great choice!

If you do speak enough Japanese, the trial lessons for 550 yen look great - this month? Nikujaga’s on the menu.

Credit: ABC Cooking

Lastly a little warning: ABC is probably not the best choice if you need strict halal, kosher, vegan, or allergy-safe conditions. They may be able to answer questions, and small adjustments might be possible depending on the recipe because you cook the food yourself. But it does not seem to present itself as a specialist school for religious or ethical dietary requirements. And to be fair, Japanese cuisine itself can be a surprisingly difficult little minefield. So for flexible eaters, ABC can be a fun and very accessible introduction. For strict dietary needs, ask in advance, ask very clearly, and maybe keep your emergency rice ball close.

That said, I see they have studios in HK (six readers!), Taiwan (four), Korea (two), Singapore (twelve - practically a mass movement), Thailand (seven) and Malaysia (one, but clearly a person of excellent taste). Here’s hoping Singapore and Malaysia also offer halal Japanese recipes, and not merely a reassuring photograph of a vegetable.

At first, Nishikado had thought about using human soldiers as enemies. Then he decided that shooting people felt wrong. A very reasonable conclusion. Instead he turned to science fiction, taking inspiration from works such as The War of the Worlds and Space Battleship Yamato, and made the enemies aliens. This was probably better for everyone. It also gave the game its strange, cold, futuristic feeling that worked well with sound and colours. We were being invaded by pixels.

When Space Invaders arrived in arcades, it did not simply become popular. It became a small social emergency. In Japan, the “Invader Craze” filled cafés and arcades with machines, and stories spread that the game had caused a shortage of 100-yen coins. Whether this was completely true is almost beside the point. The fact that people wanted to believe it already says enough. Players were drawn in by the simple rules, the pulsing sound, and the terrible feeling that the aliens were getting closer. And they really were getting closer. One of the game’s most famous features was partly an accident. As more aliens were destroyed, the hardware had fewer objects to process, so the remaining aliens moved faster. A technical limitation became dramatic tension. The machine was struggling, and somehow this made the game better. .

The legacy of Space Invaders is hard to exaggerate, although people have tried, heroically. It helped launch the golden age of arcade games and fixed many ideas that later became normal in gaming: high scores, waves of enemies, rising difficulty, and the basic shape of the shooter genre. Its international release through Midway helped make it a success in North America and Europe, and the Atari 2600 home version became one of the first real reasons to buy a home console. Decades later, people still argue about which version is best: the original arcade machine, the Atari port, or modern versions such as Space Invaders Extreme.

This is also part of Nishikado’s legacy. First you make a game about aliens. Then, forty years later, people debate the correct aliens.

And then there is Ōshima tsumugi.

Credit: Akinabara

Ōshima tsumugi is one of Japan’s most admired silk textiles. It is originally associated with Amami Ōshima in Kagoshima and is famous for being light, strong, slightly glossy, and extremely precise. The sharp kasuri patterns have the threads dyed before they are woven. This sounds simple until you realize it requires a level of planning that makes most modern calendar apps look emotionally weak. One of its iconic designs is Akina-bara, 秋名バラ. Akina is a place on Amami Ōshima. Bara is a local word referring to a bamboo basket/ sieve. The pattern is based on the woven structure of such a basket, often appearing as a refined grid with small cross-shaped details. It is quiet. It is elegant. It does not shout. It has no need to shout. It knows exactly what it is.

Credit: Kogei Japan

Ōshima tsumugi can be very expensive and technically extraordinary, but in the traditional kimono hierarchy it is not formal wear. This is one of those facts that can surprise people from outside the kimono world. Expensive does not automatically mean formal. Because Ōshima tsumugi is a woven textile made from pre-dyed threads, it belongs to stylish everyday wear rather than ceremonial dress. So no, it is not what you would usually wear to a wedding or a formal ceremony. That does not make it less special. Quite the opposite. Its charm lies there. Ōshima tsumugi is luxurious casual wear. It is for theatre visits, dinners, museum trips, lessons, and elegant outings. It is practical, beautiful, personal, and free from the stricter rules of formal kimono. In other words, it is one of the most sophisticated forms of adult play clothes. A dangerous phrase, but an accurate one.

This is why the collaboration between Amami Ōshima tsumugi and Space Invaders works so well. It sounds absurd at first. Traditional silk textile meets arcade aliens. It should not work. Which is often a good sign. Created as part of the Honba Amami Ōshima Tsumugi NEXT Project, the collection brings the famous little invaders into traditional patterns such as Akina-bara and Tatsugō. The aliens do not simply sit on top of the design like tourists taking selfies in a historic district. They hide inside the kasuri geometry. They look as if they had been there all along, quietly waiting to invade from within the grid.

Credit: Akinabara

Items such as wallets, card cases, and square plates combine 100% silk Ōshima tsumugi with one of the most recognizable icons in video game history. The result is playful, but not silly. Elegant, but not stiff. Traditional, but not trapped in a museum display case, where beautiful things go to behave themselves. It is a reminder that craft does not have to stay frozen in the past to remain authentic. Sometimes tradition survives because someone protects it very carefully. And sometimes it survives because someone lets the aliens in.

This is called ōendan or ōenbu, the cheering squad. Literally, a cheering squad. But that sounds much too harmless. An ōendan is part cheerleader, part choir, part brass band, part military ghost, part school spirit machine. It grew out of Japanese school and university culture, especially baseball rivalries, where students did not simply watch a game. They organised emotion. They waved enormous flags. They sang school songs. They shouted formal yells. They moved as one body. Somewhere between sport, ceremony, and mild possession.

Today, ōendan still exist at many Japanese universities. Waseda (below), Hosei, Chuo, Doshisha, Tokyo University and others all have their own versions. They appear at sports matches, entrance ceremonies, graduation events, public performances, and sometimes community events. They are not just decoration. They are the face of the school when the school needs a face. A very loud face. Often they are organised into three sections: leaders, brass band, and cheerleaders. The leaders command the crowd. The brass band supplies the emotional weather. The cheerleaders add colour, movement, and height.

Compared with American cheerleading, Japanese ōendan are a strange cousin. American cheerleading also began in university sport, and it also involved leading crowds. But over time, especially in the United States, cheerleading became its own athletic discipline. Stunts, jumps, tumbling, dance routines, competitions, scores, judges, trophies. The crowd is still there, but it is not always the point. Sometimes the point is to perform better than another cheer team. Which is very American. Even joy needs ranking.

Japanese ōendan , by contrast, are less about “watch us” and more about “become one of us.” The crowd is not an audience. The crowd is raw material. It must be shaped, instructed, heated, and turned into school spirit. American campuses often divide the work between cheerleaders, marching bands, mascots, and student sections. Japanese ōendan often put these things into one large, disciplined, symbolic machine. With flags. Because Japan rarely misses an opportunity to add a flag.

And then there are Cheer Re-Man’s.

They are not students.
They are not teenagers.
They are salarymen, yup regular office workers.

During the week, they work in offices. On weekends, they fly through the air in suits. This is their whole genius. They look like the men you see on the train at 8:17 in the morning, half asleep, holding a briefcase, thinking about an Excel sheet. Then suddenly one of them is thrown upward like a human resignation letter.

Their name, Cheer Re-Man’s, is a play on “salaryman” and “cheer.” The “Re” also suggests restarting, returning, rebooting. Which is nice, because most adults need rebooting by Wednesday afternoon. Their catchphrase is basically “flying salarymen,” and it works because that is exactly what they are. Ordinary working adults doing something completely unreasonable with enormous seriousness.

That is why people love them. The contrast is perfect. Serious men in suits perform acrobatic cheerleading. They are funny before they even move. Then they move, and it turns out they are actually very good. High tosses. Powerful jumps. Acrobatic moves that make the audience briefly reconsider the limits of the human resources department.

But the appeal is not only the joke. It is also the emotion behind the joke. Cheer Re-Man’s are popular because they combine two things that usually do not live in the same room: absurd visual comedy and sincere encouragement. They are funny because they are office workers in suits. They are moving because they are office workers in suits who still train, sweat, risk injury, and refuse to become spiritually laminated.

Their story has the feeling of adult youth. Not youth as in smooth skin and free time. That is gone. Naturally. This is youth after meetings, deadlines, commuting, and unread emails. They work during the week. They practise on weekends. They do not have the luxury of pretending life is easy. That is exactly why people respond to them.

Their message is simple: anyone can become something. Or perhaps more modestly, anyone can become something else. You do not have to remain the person your business card says you are. This is a dangerous message, of course. Society runs much more smoothly when people stay inside their job descriptions. Cheer Re-Man’s do not.

Their popularity grew quickly online. Their videos spread across Instagram and other social media, gathering millions of views and more than 600,000 followers. The image was too good not to travel: men in suits soaring through the air, as if the salaryman himself had finally escaped gravity, hierarchy, and possibly overtime.

They have also appeared in mainstream media and advertising, including music programmes, web commercials, and corporate PR videos. Internationally, they reached an even wider audience through Britain’s Got Talent, where they advanced to the semifinals. This is a very fine achievement for men who, one imagines, still have to submit expense reports.

Credit: Cheer Re-Man’s

Viewers often say the same thing: they feel energised. They want to try something. They feel that perhaps it is not too late. This is the secret of Cheer Re-Man’s. They are not telling people to abandon ordinary life. They are showing that ordinary life may contain a hidden trapdoor. Open it, and there may be a stage underneath.

The charm is not that they are pretending to be young. It is that they are refusing to let adulthood become a coffin with Wi-Fi. They work. They train. They perform. They get thrown through the air. They land. Then, presumably, they go back to work. This is both absurd and noble, which is often the best combination life offers.

So if you are in Japan in 2026, go and see them live. Their biggest solo shows so far will be in Tokyo on Sunday, 9 August 2026, at Tokyo International Forum, Hall A, and in Osaka on Monday/public holiday, 12 October 2026, at Orix Theater. Both shows start at 5:30 p.m. The Tokyo venue holds around 5,000 people, which is a sensible number of seats for watching office workers fly. Not too intimate. One wants a little distance when gravity is being negotiated.

Prices are between ¥3,900 and ¥14,500. That means, for less than the price of a serious dinner, you can watch grown men in business suits refuse to let adulthood win. Videos are fun, but cheerleading is physical. It needs air, sound, risk, sweat, and the tiny audience fear that someone’s section manager may fall from the sky. Cheer Re-Man’s are funny online. Live, they are probably something better: ridiculous, impressive, and oddly moving. Exactly the sort of thing one should trust life to invent.