Tokyo: The City of Culture
What comes to mind when you think of Japan? Sushi? Pokémon? Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls? It seems that the western world has a very clear image of Japan. This is why I felt I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I booked my trip to Tokyo. I expected the kaiten sushi bars (conveyor belt sushi), the bright lights, and the anime characters in seemingly every shop window. What shocked me was finding out that Tokyo is the largest city in the world, home to 13 million people. 13 million people means 13 million ideas of Japanese culture, which all come together to make Tokyo the cultural metropolis that it is. There were four main cultural groups that I noticed while in Tokyo, all of which exist side-by-side, mixed among one another.
Hi-Tech Culture
Some people call Tokyo "the City of the Future," and others call it "the City of Lights." Both of these titles reference the city's futuristic technology (be it LED lights, or developments like underground tunnels that prevent flooding), making it clear that they have a knack for the high-tech.
This may be the most prevalent of the cultural groups I witnessed in Tokyo, as the jumbotrons and neon lights are inescapable, no matter what neighborhood you visit. The Robot Restaurant was one of our most notable attractions for this section. Keyword: Robot. The Robot Restaurant is a 90-minute cabaret show featuring lasers, flashing neon lights, jumbotrons, loud music, explosions, choreography, and, of course, battling robots. This paired nicely with popcorn and a vodka soda from a flashing lightbulb souvenir cup.
Our other attraction to fit this section is teamLab Borderless digital art museum. Keyword: Digital. The museum utilized light in different forms to create moving art. Here, we spent five hours, and could have easily spent more. This was, unanimously, our favorite attraction.
Traditional Culture
With shrines and temples sprinkled throughout the city, Japan's history and traditional culture still shine brightly in Tokyo. Sensoji Temple, for example, stands in the shadow of the world's second-tallest structure, Tokyo Skytree. Sensoji is one of Tokyo's most notable Buddhist temples because of its famed five-story pagoda. We also visited Kanda Myojin Shinto shrine, Yushima Seido Confucian temple, and the Imperial Palace.
Pop Culture
Popular culture in Tokyo is another big one, with anime characters and J-Pop Idols visible on billboards and shop windows city-wide. We visited a "Character Street" which featured 21 stores dedicated to specific popular cartoon characters (Studio Ghibli, Hello Kitty, Dragon Ball Z, Gudetama, Pokémon, Snoopy, etc).
Delving further into the anime side of pop culture, we visited, what seemed like, the headquarters of two notable phenomena in Japan: Pokémon and Studio Ghibli. The Pokémon Center Mega Tokyo is the world's largest Pokémon store. The Center features hundreds of different Pokémon plushes, as well as thousands of other officially licensed merchandise options (shirts, binders, candy, ramen, trading cards, mugs, passport holders, etc). The Ghibli Museum Mitaka featured exhibits of the production process for their 17 films (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc,) as well as a store, a movie theater, and a café.
Kawaii Culture
Some characters in Japanese pop culture, like Hello Kitty, fall along the same lines of the booming kawaii culture in Tokyo. Kawaii, meaning "lovable" or "adorable," is Japan's culture of cuteness.
One of the first places we visited in Tokyo was a café called Maidreamin, where we were served by women dressed as French maids that referred to us as "Master" and spoke exclusively in a high-pitched voices. (We weren't aware before going in.) Here, you are given animal ears to wear, asked to chant and dance with the servers, and served adorable food.
A HUGE market in Tokyo's kawaii culture is cute animal cafés, where you can sip on a coffee, while playing with your choice of hedgehogs, cats, dogs, owls, sheep, foxes, rabbits, and many, many more. We visited two cafes that featured hedgehogs, otters, chinchillas, rabbits, and prairie dogs.
Our last kawaii destination was the Kawaii Monster Cafe, where cute and twisted have a blurred line. The dimly lit, but brightly colored Wonka Factory look-a-like features colorful food and performers with style straight from the streets of Harajuku.
