What’s Tokyo like? Hard to explain - you have to experience it!

Even though it’s only a short, approximately two hours, flight from Seoul to Tokyo – these two cities highly differ in many ways. First of all, there’s a historic “connection” between Japan and Korea due to the Japanese colonial era on the Korean peninsula during the Jeoson dynasty. And as feeling already a bit Korean in a way, it was quite an interesting experience to go to Japan from this historical point of view. And even though many people in Europe or the US might think of Koreans and Japanese as pretty similar, as they’re both Asian, there are for sure cultural differences, as they occur in Europe where Italian and French are they same neither.

Fortunately, I had the chance to stay with my school-friend Nico who already lives in Tokyo for two years, and consequently knows the city very well and is also fluent in Japanese. This fact gave me the chance to not only experience Tokyo from the point of view of a tourist, but rather do things only local know, hang around with Japanese and explore many things that are for sure not stated in any travel guide but show a very “true” Tokyo and offers a lot of fun.

One of the first thing Nico mentioned after my arrival and when asking him what to do and see here in Tokyo (as you can see, my preparations for this trip were very sophisticated), he mentioned that Tokyo is not comparable to cities like Rom, where there are numerous cultural highlights you can name and people “have to see” in that city, thus every tourist tour includes them. However, the case with Tokyo in his eyes is way more in the way that you just have to experience it by walking around, paying attention to details and enjoy the Japanese culture. And after three and a half days in Tokyo, I couldn’t agree more with his statement.

Welcome to retail paradise!

If you love shopping and/or are interested in retail, I can’t recommend any destination more than Tokyo to go to (out of all the cities I’ve been to so far in my life) – why? There’s hardly any big brand that doesn’t have a flagship store in Tokyo – either on Ginze Street or Omotesando and surroundings. And now, combine this vast supply of great stores with the highest/best service culture in the world – et voilà, there we go, this is Tokyo! It was really a joy to walk through Ginze Street and have a look at various stores and their designs.

And as a business student, this is a really interesting activity, as one can see various different concepts and sometimes, some that implement a great marketing/retail strategy! E.g. the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store, where everyone enters an elevator when coming into the store (or rather complex) that takes one up to the 8th floor. Then, one “has” to get down to the basement again and by doing so, just passes every of the seven floors below with tons of clothes to buy that are on perfect display, (quite loud) music, the smell of the A&F fragrance is surrounding one and the dimmed light is creating this typical feeling of the A&F store concept. And when looking down to the stairs from the 8^th floor, this store is furthermore also a little architectonical/photogenic highlight in my opinion.

But of course, A&F is by far not the only flagship store on a high level as there are various more worth mentioning. But as this would take me too long, I’d like to focus on two more experiences that stand out in my opinion (again, that’s really my personal opinion, and I haven’t seen all of the stores by far…)

Since having a flair for the watch industry and Haute Horlogerie, of course every store with watches wins my attention easily. And to be honest, I’ve seen quite some nice flagship stores and boutiques in the past, e.g. the one from IWC in Hong Kong, various brands at the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, Taipei 101 or stores from the most famous brands in New York. But I think that this multi-brand “store” in Ginze St. is really one that stands out! First of all, because it doesn’t look like a store from the outside at all. It looks more like a little showroom, or even a little museum. One could even get distracted by the nice walls with plants and a waterfall-like wall that surrounds these little “museums”. However, the cool thing follows: When entering the Omega glass cube and looking at the watches, a concierge suddenly asks me if I’d like to see the Omega store. I was quite surprised at first, as I wasn’t sure which store he was talking about, since there were only six or seven watches on display in this little glass cube – so I couldn’t see a store at all. But when answering ‘yes’, the concierge just pushed a button and suddenly I realized that I was standing in an elevator – how awesome is that?! And quickly, I was at the Omega store on the first level. The coolest elevator was in my opinion the one from Swatch though, as it was fully covered with Swatch watches what made it almost like some kind of art exhibition in my opinion. There were a total of four stores I think, one of them below ground level and three above, all accessible by one of the described “little museum elevators”.

The second highlight worth mentioning and recommendable to every visitor to Tokyo in my opinion is the two level food court at the Mitsukoshi store. If you ever felt like buying an orange for approximately six US Dollars – there you can get one! As I haven’t bought and eaten one, I can’t say anything about the taste (I assume it is outstanding though), but from the exterior perspective, you won’t find any fruit or product that doesn’t look perfect and is on perfect display! And as mentioned before, the service level in Japan is incredible high as well what makes even walking around and looking at the counters an experience already.

A very un-touristy stay in Tokyo

As mentioned before, I was quite lucky to stay with someone who lives in Tokyo already for quite some time. This let me experience Tokyo from a very local perspective, what included the fact that we actually never dinned in a typically touristy restaurant, but rather a “Chnelle” as Nico preferred to label them. I was sitting in coffees, no one ever would consider even entering the building they are located in as it doesn’t seem fancy at all, however, the place could easily be located in SOHO in NYC and be a super hipster place. Or also enjoying a beer at one of these super tiny bars in Lion Gai where maximally seven people fit in – what great experiences! Furthermore, I was able to drink with great Japanese guys (friends of Nico), play ‘Risk’ on Sunday evening while enjoying (well, it might be the wrong word to be honest, as the food was not really outstanding) home-delivery pizza or find a super great single-speed store with a huge stock of everything a cycle-fanatic can think of (and in almost all possible colors)!

Another funny anecdote of how “off the beaten track” my stay in Tokyo was, is the “museum” visit I did with Yeni (Nico’s tourist guide ‘replacement’ on Sunday afternoon as he had to attend some school activities – but a clear optical upgrade :p). As the weather was really bad on that day, it was raining cats and dogs (or maybe ‘sushi and sashimi’ would be more appropriate in Japan, haha), we had to skip the sightseeing and shopping and look for indoor activities. Most of the people would now go to one of the various museums, e.g. art or history – but not us! Instead, we thought that something Tokyo-related would be somehow more fun and somehow, I was quite interested in earthquakes - yes, Japan experiences a lot of earthquakes, and we even had on in the morning of that day (3.9 but a bit further away from Tokyo), where one could definitely feel that the floor was slightly shaking – especially when sleeping on the floor, haha. And thus, we attended the life and rescue training of the Tokyo government in the afternoon! It is actually more designed for Tokyo citizens than tourists and not really a museum, but it was nevertheless a funny and very unusual experience. Furthermore, it was already my second ‘training’ here in Asia where I literally couldn’t understand a word. The first one was an introduction to Thomson Reuters Data Stream in Korean on SNU campus two weeks ago and the second one was this training in Japanese – no chance to get a single word, haha (luckily, at least the movies had English subtitles). The highlight of this training was definitely the earthquake simulation at the end (and also the only thing worth to go there in my opinion) – it was pretty impressive to experience a 7.0 earthquake! Unfortunately, it was not possible to experience a 9.0 (like the one in 2011, Fukushima) even though I asked for.

But to sum up, yes, I’ve also seen and done some rather traditional tourist stuff as seeing some temples, make a visit to Shibuya Crossing or the park near Tokyo Station where the emperor’s palace is located. But due to the bad weather (cloudy on all days and rainy on Sunday), the pictures are unfortunately not that outstanding – but definitely a good reason to come back to Tokyo and Japan again ;)

Nevertheless, I had some super interesting days and lots of fun. A huge thank you to Nico again for his hospitality and tourist guy skills – I won’t recommend you on tripadvisor.com though, as you might get too busy otherwise, haha.

Friends since the 6^th grade (1999) in Zurich – and still sharing great times!

p.s. one recommendation to everyone considering visiting Tokyo: Take enough cash with you! Not sure why, but it seems pretty hard to withdraw cash with your Maestro card and at most places/restaurants etc. you can only pay with cash! Thus, cash is King Kong – make sure to have enough with you when flying there – and since it’s an expensive city, take really enough with you!