2. Stay in a capsule hotel
Catering mainly to drunken salarymen who have missed their trains home, capsule hotels are made up of floors lined with two levels of tiny rooms, each containing a thin mattress, a comfy blanket, and (in most) a TV and radio built into the plastic surrounds.
A metre wide, a metre high and two metres long, the rooms are just about big enough to stand in, but not much else. However, the clichéd description of them as being “coffin-like” is rather wide of the mark: while claustrophobics and anyone over 2m tall should give them a miss, most actually find these minuscule rooms surprisingly comfortable – and there’s no more characteristic Japanese sleeping experience.
3. Have a cuppa in a cat café
The latest hit formula in Tokyo’s polymorphous
kissaten culture is the cat café. Offering quality time with purring felines, it’s easy to understand the appeal: they are relaxing places, offering the pleasures of pet ownership without the commitment.
Ranging from tiny converted apartments to spacious multi-level facilities, cat cafés all have similar rules. There’s a cover charge based on the amount of time you spend in the café and perhaps a small amount extra for your drinks. You have to take your shoes off on entering and sanitize your hands and note that feeding and taking photos of the cats is OK, but you’re not allowed to manhandle or disturb them if they’re sleeping.
4. Walk Shibuya crossing
As a mind-blowing introduction to contemporary Tokyo, it’s hard to beat Shibuya, birthplace of a million-and-one consumer crazes, and best visited at night when the neon signs of restaurants, bars and cinemas battle it out with five-storey TV screens for the attention of passers-by.
This blaze of lights doesn’t get much brighter than around the plaza on the west side of Shibuya Station, where you’ll find one of the most famous pedestrian crossings in the world – its stock only rose further following its depiction in the film Lost in Translation. It’s amazing to see just how many people can cross a road at the same time.