Shopping

Koenji: Tokyo's Vintage and Punk-Rock Neighborhood

Skip the glass storefronts of Shibuya: Koenji trades them for overstuffed vintage racks, basement clubs with the amps turned up too loud, and a scrappy independence that Tokyo's gentrification has never quite managed to smooth over.

Shimokitazawa: Tokyo's Secondhand Fashion and Live Music District

For decades this was the one part of Tokyo too tangled and too cheap for anyone to tidy up properly, and even after a decade of redevelopment near the station, the side streets still refuse to make sense on a map.

Kappabashi: Tokyo's Kitchen Town

Before it sold professional-grade knives and plastic sushi that fools tourists into hunger, this stretch between Ueno and Asakusa sold nothing anyone particularly wanted, and its transformation into the supply closet for half of Tokyo's restaurants says something about how the city actually works.

Nishiki Market: Kyoto's Kitchen

Five centuries of merchants built this covered lane on cold well water and fish that couldn't afford to spoil, long before anyone called it a tourist attraction. Nishiki still runs on that same logic: buy what's in season, eat it fast, keep moving.