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urban exploring

What’s it like to join Tokyo’s walking-and-talking-with-strangers club for a day?

We strap on our shoes and head into downtown Tokyo for a philosophical conversation prompt and a walk with a whole bunch of people we’ve never met before.

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Hundreds of rose bushes in bloom at Tokyo’s off-the-beaten-path, next-to-the-tracks flower street

Local road goes from trash dump to treasure.

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Temple with 600-year-old tree near busy Tokyo station is like a tranquil pocket dimension

Who’d have guessed there was a centuries-old snack shop too just a quick stroll away from one of downtown’s busiest rail hubs?

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Fading Tokyo – Horikiri Station, the Arakawa River, and Kinpachi-sensei[Walking course]

Mr. Sato heads to the neighborhood of a famous TV drama and finds a nostalgic taste of a youth he never had.

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Fading Tokyo – Searching for signs of the Showa era as local neighborhoods evolve[Photos]

Mr. Sato starts his urban exploration of Tokyo to catch a glimpse of local neighborhoods’ pasts before they’re changed forever.

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Tokyo big walk – Walking from Tokyo Station to the Big Sight convention center on Tokyo Bay【Pics】

A unique way to see some very different Tokyo neighborhoods. Read More

Wrong Exit Exploring – The serene solitude of taking the wrong exit at Tokyo Disneyland’s station

Hardly anyone uses the North Exit of Maihama Station, but we did.

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Reports of the death of Tokyo’s Daikanyama neighborhood have been greatly exaggerated

A visit to Shibuya’s low-key, high-class neighbor.

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This themed Starbucks in Seoul is hidden away in possibly the coolest location ever

Getting there was like traveling through several dimensions–but it was so worth it!

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A visit to T-CAT, Tokyo’s often forgotten City Air Terminal【Photos】

Once a super convenient portal for flying out of Tokyo, a lot of people forget the Tokyo City Air Terminal still exists.

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The beautifully lonely building in Shinkai’s Weathering with You? It’s a real place in Tokyo

We’ve visited the real-world location for the pivotal scene in the anime event of the summer, but it’s about to disappear forever.

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Undead train station in Yokohama is beautifully nostalgic, poignantly desolate

Mr. Sato visits a virtually abandoned station that continues to operate in Yokohama.

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Abandoned Japanese shopping mall’s onions are now so popular that they’re selling out【Photos】

Customers now outnumbering salespeople by an infinitely large ratio.

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Abandoned Japanese mall has no employees, but still one operating store selling just one item

Hate waiting in line while doing your shopping? This is the place for you!

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We search for the fabled bed and breakfast inside Narita’s runway that’s just 10 bucks a night

While it’s often referred to in travel literature as Tokyo Narita Airport, Japan’s busiest international air hub is actually located in Chiba Prefecture, making it about a one-hour train ride away from downtown Tokyo (and you can tack an extra 30 minutes or so onto that if you’re not willing to shell out the extra cash for the express train). This makes Narita sort of inconvenient if you’ve got an early departure, or if you arrive late and don’t feel like spending two hours in transit before you can collapse in your hotel bed.

So our interest was piqued when we found out about a bed and breakfast built so close to the airport it’s actually inside the runway area, and once we heard the rumors that it costs just 1,000 yen (US $8.50) a night, we decided to go searching for the mysterious hotel ourselves.

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