Tokyo, yeast, and expectations
Japan is understandably a hot travel destination in general, but I've seen it come up here on Tildes several times, with many people sharing their stories. This is and isn't that.
I traveled to Japan (and Korea) over a year ago, and I've been rotating this post in my head nearly the whole time. If you want to skip my word vomit: tl:dr it was kind of mid, there are parts I would return for, but many that are very off-putting (especially as of this moment with Japan's politics).
I'm a millennial, and by most accounts, a weeb. I was first was exposed to anime/manga via Slayers, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo and other early Anime that played occasionally on network television, around the late 1990s, which evolved as it did for most of us with Toonami, Adult Swim, and renting movies like Akira and Ghost in the Shell at Blockbuster. I've been regularly consuming Otaku culture essentially my entire life, and my wife was exactly the same as me, we both read Manga and watch Anime as a regular pass time. I was also completely aware that Otaku culture is generally looked down upon by genpop, probably moreso a decade or more ago till now, but I wasn't under the impression that Manga/Anime was how Japan actually was.This isn't to say we had some idealized view of Japan or Tokyo (where we spent our vacation), we've done a lot of domestic and international travel up to that point, so I believe we had realistic expectations going in of how our vacation would go. To be clear, it's not that those expectations weren't necessarily met, but there's some things that I started to realize I may have overlooked, tidbits of Japanese culture that you will get glimpses of in their media, and specifically, the types of media I related to, the series I found most interesting to me with characters that aligned with my own values, or something like that.
You will hear many testimonials of how great visiting Tokyo can be, and I want to caveat with the single complication that made things unreasonably difficult and why I would exercise caution if you are in the same position, but being perfectly frank, it was only one component: We traveled with myself, my wife, and our 2 year old daughter. To clarify, I do not have a difficult child, in fact by almost all metrics she's extremely well behaved and easy to travel with, if she wasn't I would never have considered a 14+hr flight, so take everything I say that I have a near saint of a toddler, she wasn't the problem at all.
Tokyo is not toddler friendly, Tokyo is toddler hostile, weird things you would overlook or not even think about as adult travelers will consistently cause problems. Tokyo is great for walkability if you are able bodied, it is a far cry from being ADA compliant as we're used to stateside, expect to carry a stroller as I did up stairs many, many times. Over our trip there, you notice things: not a single native Japanese takes a toddler outside, like at all, let's ignore birth rates for a moment, because kids were present, but not a single kid under 3 was anywhere to be seen. Not in restaurants, not at parks, not in malls. The possible sole exception is Odaiba, which is designed to be a family friendly area. This begins to cause friction almost everywhere else though. Kids menus are few and far between, rarely will you find high chairs, and frustratingly: many restaurants will not give you a to go box, that's just not a thing there, so expect to simply waste food or money if you order a main for a toddler (because there is no kids meal) etc. There is also nearly nothing catered to toddlers....basically anywhere, again this is pretty in line with our expectations, but when we went out of our way to find solutions, and they still didn't seem possible (or were inexplicably closed....they will actually CLOSE parks if there is a light drizzle) it begins to wear on you. Similarly shopping! One of the biggest draws of being in Tokyo, will be rather limited, both in things that would fit a 1-4yo and in physical dimensions of stores, which may or may not accommodate you pushing a stroller. The busy tourist areas are also quite challenging to navigate, and especially in places like Shibuya, a lot of the joint restaurant areas will have exceptionally small tables or standing room only, as will most Ramen or Tempura restaurants. "Family restaurant" is a category in Japan because taking a family elsewhere is difficult.
I can handle almost all of this, but it's coupled with, and again, I am a parent, I understand that children can be taxing, but there's a low level of animosity ever present almost anywhere you go, of course there's background radiation of, you're a tourist and not a local, but couple that with now you're being a difficult tourist, and you can start to tell people do not want you there. This isn't to say we didn't have good experiences, many native Japanese were very accommodating to us, helped us out, were happy to see a cute kid etc. I don't want to paint it as the experience was entirely negative, it wasn't, but it was SO MUCH WORSE than literally anywhere else I have traveled re: having a toddler or child with you, and it's not really conveyed because well, most people traveling to Tokyo do not have kids in tow (and I have heard that for example Osaka and other cities are better about this, so I don't want to paint a broad brush.) There were also plenty of tourists traveling with kids, and even when we didn't share a language, we exchanged knowing glances of how tired of the whole situation we were.
Also the food is seriously overrated, give me hate if you want, but the US has better food, especially LA/NYC. You can get better sushi, cheaper, in LA than Tokyo. It's the truth. The hamburg steak at Tsubame Kitchen in Shinogawa was an exception, that was delicious.
There's a manga I love: Moyashimon, it's about a college student who can see microbes (including the eponymous Yeast), that's entirely unimportant to what I want to talk about. The characters are extremely relatable, I believe I was also in university when I first read it, and many parts resonated with me, and I found the morals of the characters fairly normal. Almost all of these characters are outcasts or pariahs by Japanese standards. Conformity is still very much the norm in Japan, and especially the majority of Tokyo outside the kind of touristy (or counterculture) areas like Shibuya, Akihabara, Kabukicho etc. As we were heavily jetlagged, the majority of our days would start around 5am, the sea of salarymen is absolutely nuts. Thousands of workers in suits, every day, bright and early, and returning at rush hour. Moyashimon deals a lot with the difficulties the characters will face when they leave college and are forced to conform, they will have to be clean shaven, they must stop dying their hair, they must conform to the gender presentation they were assigned at birth. The story, and many other media in the same vein from similar authors, is critical of the culture of conformity. The current Japan, in current year, is still xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic. In relating to these media, whether it's moyashimon, or the works of Nagata Kabi, or even something like HoriMiya (which tragically kills almost all the social commentary of the original work in both the redraw manga as well as the anime), I was relating to being critical of Japan's culture, of being critical of those things.
I don't really know where else to go with this, sorry for the word vomit. I had thought that I knew what to expect when traveling to Japan, I did my research, I knew how to not be rude, not to be intrusive, how to generally be my version of a "good tourist", and it wasn't that my expectations were wrong, I simply found out I liked Tokyo less than I thought I would.
Some serious positives though: meeting my friends who live in Tokyo was great, and we absolutely had a blast, I'd have not had half as much fun if I didn't have people who lived there that knew the places to go and what to see. The climbing gyms and bouldering scene is WORLD CLASS. B pump Ogikubo is famous for a reason, and the national training center in Odaiba was also a highlight.
Maybe this will give some added balance, I'm not sure. This is just the experience I had, there were highlights and lowlights, but overall, I just did not jive with Tokyo in particular, and I would like other people to at least consider that they might not, too.
Hey, no worries on the push back. To be clear though, I wasn't trying to paint it as a place you shouldn't go, not did I actually have a shit time. I was using a Japanese foldable stroller while there which I unironically love (the Pigeon Bingle) and didn't have that much trouble all things considered with it, but yeah the stairs and the crowds and rush hour subway was rough (especially the yamanote line iirc).
I also didn't want to imply it wasn't safe to travel to if you are LGBT or that you are in danger as a tourist or anything of the sort, but let's call a spade a spade right, they are bad on LGBT acceptance.
I also believe that other parts of Japan and Tokyo can be more family friendly than others, if we'd spent the entire time in Odaiba it' would never come up. But if you go to Shibuya, or Ginza et al the friction starts to add up. Ogikubo being more of a suburb was also fine.
The main thrust of this post is exactly offering a personal experience that is not another "This is best place to visit ever" and not just to be contrarian, and my point is if you're someone who is both observant and culturally critical, you'll start to notice some unpleasantness that you may or may not be able to push past.
Just stuff like yeah, all the convenience stores have a lot of foreign workers, but you don't see them much in other jobs at all, or that the swarms of salarymen are still almost all men, or how you see everyone go to work at 7am and they don't get back till after 7pm, exhausted, all for not very much money, and increasingly less money with the weak yen. This starts to bother me, I feel like I'm being a voyeur almost.
You don't even have to take my word on it or anything, part of this in my opinion is that the family friendly -ness of a place kind of scales with whether there are other children there, and comparing every other place I've been (including Seoul!) Tokyo just seemed to have not very many, and as a result, some of the extra things other places do to make it less difficult weren't there.
I really didn't have an awful time, I had an okay time, and that's what I wanted to convey.
I think there is enough of a difference around going to good restaurants in Japan that it can perhaps be difficult for Western visitors to have a good experience unless they are specifically researching where to go and have the ability to go there. Restaurants in Tokyo, and Kyoto, feel heavily reservation based, in part because of how small they tend to be, and making reservations without understanding Japanese can be difficult or impossible for many of them. And as there are so many small restaurants, knowing which ones are particularly good can be challenging. This is not entirely different from LA, where the food culture is often obsessed with small, obscure places, or NYC, where obtaining reservations for good places can often be infeasible through normal routes, but for English speakers navigating that culture in LA and NYC can, I think, be easier. It is certainly the case that, recently having been in Kyoto to visit a friend of ours there, it would have been extremely difficult for us to find or go to as good of places as he took us to. Almost all of them needed reservations, and most did not have anyone there who understood a language other than Japanese at all. Beyond that, we simply wouldn't have known the current food scene there enough to know where to go at that moment. But again, that's more a general difficulty in finding the best food somewhere particularly foreign:
This feels similar, for example: if your view of food not being great is that it is 'fine for American food', and hated the food quality there, I might suggest that you are viewing the food scene in the US from much the same perspective that the poster is viewing the food scene in Japan. I expect that may even have been the point you were trying to make. There are certainly great restaurants in many places in the US, and in my experience, restaurants in some parts of the northeast US have some of the best focus on (non-meat/fish) ingredient quality and an appreciation of simplicity of preparation in the world, certainly better than restaurants in Japan, where that isn't so much of a focus. But going to great places similarly requires an understanding of the area. Sushi is arguably particularly ill-suited to recent food trends in parts of the US, and rather out of fashion. (I'd also suggest that saying you didn't like the food in America is a bit like saying you didn't like the food in Europe; it is far too large and too loosely connected to be seen as a single country culturally.)
With that said, I've had sushi in LA, NYC, and Tokyo. I'd argue that, if you were specifically searching for great sushi, it would be very difficult to rank one city wholly above the other. They are all giant, cosmopolitan cities. All three have great sushi places, and great sushi restaurants feel a bit homogeneous throughout metropoles. Sushi also isn't heavily local, seasonal, or terroir-based in a way that can't be transported relatively easily; the fish, the water, the rice, and so on all matter, but those can all be flown anywhere. I expect the question would be very different if comparing kaiseki restaurants; I expect they exist, but don't actually know of any in LA or NYC.
I am puzzled, however, by the poster's suggestion that the sushi is both better and cheaper in LA, and would suggest that good sushi is much easier to find in Tokyo.
Edit: since responses seem to be largely discussing inexpensive American sushi, I'd like to reiterate my point that, yes, good sushi is much better in Tokyo than in the US, but I am not convinced that there is an enormous difference in high-end sushi places in Tokyo/NYC/LA.
I consider sushi one of the most local and seasonal dishes. Sushi is entirely a celebration of fish. The only ingredients are raw fish and rice, and the latter is optional. The quality of the dish is essentially the fish and the chef’s ability to cut the fish.
Most places in Japan have fresh fish. 80% of Japan live on the coast. 100% of Japan is within 75 miles of the sea. If you have to fly the fish, it’s already doomed to be mid.
The reason American sushi has so much extra stuff, and is often heavily sauced, is because the fish needs to be frozen and flown in much of the country. Which is what it is, but good sushi it does not make.
I would agree: there's fish and then there's in season fish of the same exact species. At peak season they might have roe, or bigger/fattier, or in peak breeding condition etc. Flash frozen / air transported, you're already one step removed. Not having that personal relationship with fishers or fish vendors is another level. I'm not pretending to be enough of a gourmand to be able to tell, mind, but I think the idea of a celebration of the seasonal catch is missing from regular north America sushi restaurants with our year round standard "salmon tuna combo #4" mindset.
I was using tabalog and my own research to select for restaurants, I also had a native speaker with me and was making reservations. I'm a foodie, food is one of my primary focuses when I travel, so yes I was mostly focusing on Michelin guide or high end restaurants. I had several Omakase there that I'd consider overpriced, though with a few highlights, nothing out of the ordinary or that I couldn't find elsewhere. I got burned far less in Korea using the Kakao/Naver, where highly rated restaurants all were consistently very very good. It was just contrary to what I had heard which was that especially Tabalog, a 4.0+ should be extremely rare and definitely good, they often were just acceptable (to me), but I could be(well, am) an overly critical person in regards to food.
Appreciate the review of sorts. I'll be traveling to Japan in a couple months for the first time. Though I'll be the "child," since I'll be going with my parents. Hopefully no need to put me in a stroller or high chair!
I guess I'm a little confused why you would order a separate meal for a toddler? Why not just feed them from your own plate/meal? Though I don't have kids, so maybe it's normal to get kids their own meal. Regardless, I could see how that and then the lack of ADA/stroller-friendlier spaces would be annoying to a parent. Especially on travel to a foreign country where it can be a little more stressful than usual.
I imagine a lot of the reasons people like central Tokyo is that it’s not child friendly. There’s a reason there’s so many advertisements for “adults only cruises” or “adults only experiences” and it’s not pornography. Shibuya, Shinjuku, etc are an adult’s (or, at least, young adult+) playground. No kids is a feature, not a bug.
That being said, while much is said of Japan’s birth rate we are still talking about percentage points. There’s still plenty of children being born. The suburbs of Tokyo are vast, and that’s where most of the child rearing will be. Cars, child friendly spaces, and so forth.
It’s not all that different in NYC, just scale. I don’t see a lot of people taking strollers on canal street, or lower east side at night, or ktown. Plenty of strollers in Brooklyn heights or upper east side. Different spaces for different people.
It’s a bit of a generalization to say that having a child with you in Japan is hard when Japan is a big, big country and you’ve only been in a small slice.
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As an aside that food take is insane. Subjective is subjective but I cannot imagine thinking LA sushi is anywhere near the sushi in Japan, or that food is cheaper in the US. Most takeout I buy is $20 and an actual sit down place is usually $60+. Meanwhile 1000 yen is still a common restaurant price for a meal (which is 6 dollars).
I specifically called out Tokyo, not Japan in general, as even from native Japanese they would piggyback on other cities being much more convenient/accessible for families with young kids.
To start - your experience is your experience and I'm sorry bringing a kid to Tokyo was so rough for you.
That said, I want to share - for anyone else with kids considering it - that I had the exact opposite experience. We brought a (fresh) 3 year old to Tokyo last summer and went again this summer (plus other cities in Asia), and Tokyo + Osaka were by a country mile the best places to have a stroller that I've travelled to. Far better than Europe, better than major cities in North America, better than other cities in Asia for sure.
Travelling with a tiny kid is tough, period - you get used to having your car to shuttle all your crap around with you. In Tokyo and Osaka, there is at least plenty of ramps and elevators almost everywhere. Most other cities require you to figure it the fuck out and good-luck. As I have seen mentioned already, this is also driven by where you stay - Odaiba and the surrounding area in particular was much more kid-friendly I found.
EDIT: Ah shit, I see now that @picketship had basically a longer version of the same post and now I feel bad about dog-piling. Sorry! I won't delete since you'll probably see this comment in your inbox now, but to flip it around:
I also very much empathise with the feeling of being super super excited to going somewhere and then having the pain of it not living up to your feelings. I had an even worse time going on exchange in Singapore, which on the flight over I was so excited for I couldn't even sleep!
Glad you had a good time! I think you pointed to something particularly noteworthy, and this is the real sticking point: I don't think it's great that if I want to do certain things or go to certain areas, then it becomes more of a chore than others. Again this was not disastrous, we still had a good time. But going to pen stores or shopping in Ginza, these stores are often extremely busy, crowded, and often not very easy to navigate even with a extremely light stroller, yes Odaiba was fine, but I don't and didn't want to simply stay in Odaiba! It was much, much more difficult for my wife and I to branch out and do our own things, basically what we had no problems with in other places we've traveled, because my wife can't lift the stroller easily, or is much more concerned letting my daughter walk in a crowd. And for me as great as the climbing gyms are, they are often small and crowded, not somewhere I could bring my daughter in the stroller and have her just off the mats.....despite that always or nearly always being an option stateside. It's not a fault but it's something that is annoying.
Anyways it's NBD, I fully expected people to disagree or express a different experience, this was as I said, kind of half travelogue, half cultural observation, half word vomit ;)
Ginza is the glitzy business district, so that's not much of a surprise. Did you visit many department stores? Their food courts on the bottom floor (デパ地下) are extremely accessible and usually very popular. We saw lots of kids there on our trip.
Do you mind sharing where you've been that was better? I am genuinely stumped trying to imagine travelling anywhere at all that has less of the complaints about strollers you describe.
To directly compare since it was the same vacation: I experienced zero of the issues I had in Tokyo in both Seoul and Busan, and both still had proper public transit. Obviously the beaches in Busan were extremely child friendly, but that's perhaps cheating a bit. Seoul is very hilly so sometimes I'd be pushing her uphill but in general the sidewalks were wider, better maintained, and rarely if ever did I actually have to carry the stroller up stairs.
In North America: LA, NoLa, and Montreal especially were totally fine, no complaints. Granted LA and New Orleans necessitated a rental car to get between destinations, but pushing her around was completely fine otherwise. The Montreal metro was plenty and again, possibly because it's simply less crowded period, space was never an issue.
Goes to show how much sample size matters. I just did Seoul and HATED having a stroller there. So much worse than japan for me. Less ramps, more crowded, less working elevators.
Yep. There are plenty of places which are more child friendly like some of the zoos and parks, but kid menus are surprisingly rare in Tokyo. Other Japanese cities are generally better about that.
I'd say the culture can be summarized as "don't be a nuisance." Which is why the public transit is surprisingly pleasant with no loud music nor phone conversations, and the most popular scent is unscented.
Xenophobic I'll actually agree more than homophobic and transphobic. In my experience, there is a culture of live and let live or minding your own business (to an almost annoying degree). In NYC, my wife and I ate at the most expensive 3 Michelin star sushi restaurant in the US and got subtle homophobia despite going for our anniversary. In Japan, we got only positive comments and admiring looks renting matching kimono in Kyoto.
Lol, I'll sorta agree with this. Japanese food is often bland and hyperfocused on aesthetics. Many of the traditional wagashi are only slightly better than marzipan. To my eternal disappointment, fluffy pancakes mostly taste like bland egg souffle. To be fair, they are literally called souffle pancakes in Japanese (スフレパンケーキ).
It's difficult for foreigners to find good places unless you're making reservations or understand the review culture. Some of the best Japanese restaurants have 3.5 stars on Google Maps. Japanese restaurant reviews are more critical and far less likely to be 5 stars regardless of quality. In fact, restaurants with suspiciously high ratings should be a flag that they're mostly frequented by tourists.
The best ramen I've ever had was some chicken ramen in Ginza. Strawberries were in-season when I went, and we had some incredible parfaits at Shiseido Parlor (which invented ice cream soda floats). We also got delicious tanghulu from a street vendor at an outdoor market.
Thank you for mentioning this, this was the impression I had gotten but I wasn't sure. I've also been told that it's best to go to good/great restaurants for lunch (less crowded/maybe no reservation required, and a lunch menu with appropriate pricing) and then go to casual restaurants or get street food for dinner. I accidentally did this a few times and I think it worked out much better. I would much prefer to have a quiet afternoon lunch at someplace fancy with less stress and no waiting. Then for dinner I can enjoy the nightlife a bit more and queue for a quick meal at a street stall or a hole in the wall.
I'm not sure whether lunch places are any less crowded if they're popular. There's a culture of queueing and lines or reservations which can make spontaneous visits difficult unless you're going to open markets or high volume places.
I was surprised to learn that there isn't really a culture of going out for breakfast. There are breakfast restaurants, but they're not too common. Many many popular restaurants don't open before 11 AM.
I noticed this as well! At first I thought I was just lazy and not looking hard enough or missing some kind of context clue about where the breakfasts were hidden. Alas, I'm not a breakfast person, or really a morning person, so I just didn't eat until lunch time. On future visits I will have to do better to keep my energy up and make better use of my day. I think Lawson/7 Eleven/FamilyMart might have to fill that gap unless people have suggestions on how I can find these elusive breakfasts. ;)
Cafés (kisatens) and chains are usually safe(r) for breakfast. In Tokyo, the Starbucks Reserve is an interesting spot. Nice inns or hotels may offer a Japanese breakfast!
I used the Japanese review site as well as a native Tokyoite and we never had anything bad. Everything was good to occasionally great, but Tokyo is actually quite expensive, and I was not impressed with the cheaper options, whereas I've had Al Pastor in LA from a truck that was elite. I think it's a thing where there is also more bad food in the US? But the peaks are really similar, if not I'd give the edge to major US cities, LA, New Orleans, NYC, Houston, Chicago.
Tokyo (especially Ginza) can be expensive, so that's not too surprising. Some of the open markets are great spots for cheaper bites though. The US has the best food in the world with the diverse immigrant culture, but there's a wide range in every country.
For reviews, Google Maps is what every Japanese person I talked to recommended, so that's largely what we used.
Our biggest miss was actually a two Michelin star Spanish restaurant. I later learned that Michelin raters are (mostly) native to the city they review, so I take international recommendations with a grain of salt now!
Honestly Michelin stars are a bit of a crapshoot these days, it's a bit disconcerting, but they definitely drive people to go there.
I've found 3 stars are much more about service than food, so I actually tend to avoid them now. 1 and 2 star places I'll possibly check out because many of them are fantastic.
First off, HoriMiya is highly underrated. This fellow Millenial Otaku applauds you for good taste and I'm looking up Moyashimon as we speak.
It can be rough sharing thoughts about travel disappointment, especially for something pretty universally beloved. There's your own experience, and the divide between that and the reaction from others can become a secondary source of disappointment. So I hope while you read the respondes here, you don't take them to be hostile or unbelieving or dismissive of your experiences, just more like, oh I wouldn't have noticed, or I solved it a different way, or I expected slightly different, or it also sucked for me but experienced 100x other positive things to balance out. Certainly, if I had read your post and I had a tot with me, I would be enabled to do further research to make sure we have a good thing. Small things like bringing my own Bento (is that legal?) or bringing an umbrella stroller instead of a compact, and most definitely NOT an American full size.
I've only ever been to Japan once during an extremely short 3 day layover: Narita > Tokyo Station > Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (三鷹の森ジブリ美術館) > Narita. That was it. But I was travelling with my senior parents, one of whom had severely limited walking abilities / cognitive issues, and a neurodiverse kindergartener who was mostly carried / strolled because of sensory issues / the crowd / my parents were spoiling the grandchild. We just took things at their pace: never be out during rush hour, stopping every 100m or so, have only the one destination for three days of stay, pay $$$ for taxi.
I think my tot and I additionally went to the Aeon adjacent to the hotel, late at night, and that was the entire trip.
I did have one unpleasant memory of flying out of Japan, where the border agent confiscated my tot's food scissors. They had someone run fetch a chart, measured it, (to my eyes) it was just under but, nope, rules are rules. The agent kept apologizing, looked as distressed as my (by now) wailing kid, almost in tears himself, but confiscated them anyway.
The only "kids meal" we had in those three days was at the airport where they have this adorable airport themed teishoku (set meal) with the omurice shaped into an airplane - ketchup windows, colorful mochi + red bean dessert, and in tiny portions in plastic sections where the food doesn't touch other parts of the meal.
And to further empathize, I didn't like Italy very much initially either.
Dog poop everywhere and many things looked weird and old but not a nice historic way. Pisa was just crowds, the collosium looked better in the movies, and one of our meals we got tourist trapped hard. I lost my wallet at a cafe, and when I went to report it to the police, the unfriendly attitude of them sitting in their fortress looking building, I experienced quite a bit of culture shock. The granny next to me was very adamant in her assertion it must have been those Roma people (aka, not a real Italian person). Nevermind I said I probably just lost it in an ADHD moment, it was surely those awful outsiders, she said, to me, an outsider. It wasn't until I stopped doing the tourist thing, and just lived in my husband's cousin's apartment for the rest of the month that the trip really took off. It was buying the cheapest beer from the tiny store around the corner, the croissant outside the apartment, just walking the streets with no destination, stumbling across random beautiful buildings... None of those are Instagramable, nobody would travel to eat just normal frankly mid (except one meal) food, but that was the best part of the trip.
I hope you do give Japan another try someday and have a better experience.
In the J-Drama Beautiful Life (2000), a popular hairstylist falls in love with a librarian who uses a wheelchair, there's a scene where he's trying to lift her in her wheelchair up the stairs to a nice itameshi restaurant but he really struggles with it because adult humans are heavy and (if I'm remembering correctly) the waiter even comes outside and tells him he can't do that. They try some other restaurants too but eventually the only place they can find is an outdoor ramen joint where all the tables and chairs are on the side of the road.
Tokyo is built for the working class to go to work. Everything else is secondary to that idea. Barrier-Free design is becoming a lot more common though as the population is rapidly aging out of being a "society person". It will be interesting to see what the future Tokyo will be like! Hopefully more mellow with more kids menus.
But even outside of Tokyo it seems like strollers for toddlers aren't that common... unless you count mamachari. Dakkohimo or making kids walk seems like the only two choices~
It's crazy dangerous to try to lift even a small child's stroller up stairs, let alone an adult holy moly I'm glad it was a fictional account and even then someone stopped them.
Japan has a lot of elevators, so buildings are usually somewhat accessible. They're often hidden though.
Do you have to ask around in Japanese to find the elevator?
In Japanese, how would you communicate that you're unwell? My Japanese is rusty at this point, and I haven't been in a position where I needed to use the elevator.
I'm so used to kana and kanji that romaji is a bit tricky. I chuckled reading erebeta. We'll see if I still remember these by the next time I visit (though hopefully they're not relevant), thanks!
To each their own but compared to NYC for example I’ve found it easier to travel around Tokyo with a kid and –probably because I’ve lived here for so many years– I find the food just fine.
These days many train cars in Tokyo have areas for people with strollers that are large and super clearly marked in like bright orange, green, or pink or something. I appreciate that those of us with young kids are now not only using that space but asking people without young children or health problems to move aside. Also, train stations often have elevators from the platform to the street but it requires planning one’s trip with knowledge of which car will roll up near the elevator at a given station. Staircases aren’t so great for lifting strollers and you won’t get auto team lifting from strangers like in NYC but whatever.
A two or three year old in a Japanese family does spend a lot of time doing stuff with their parent(s) but generally within their community, especially on weekdays. If you aren’t in a dense residential neighborhood of young families at the right times of the day they are likely to appear absent but they are there. Tokyo is vast. There are many places for people to be, so sometimes it seems like no one is anywhere.
Food for two year olds… well they are generally eating basic Japanese foods at restaurants that parents know they will have like some rice or udon and maybe some side dish. Might not even be on the menu. Many parents of kids that age also bring food for the kid along with them from home like onigiri or something.
In the end I’ve found the availability of clean kid-friendly bathrooms to be the single most important thing for my family when we go out. A city like Tokyo has them in abundance.
Sushi? Lots of mediocre sushi in a country that has so much of it. Excellent sushi for a good price is abundant as well. Any sushi in Japan that still costs a lot when considered in USD should not be considered the normal price for good sushi.
Finally, vibes regarding being a burden to an employee because you are a tourist or need some extra time or consideration because you have a kid? Real. I’ve found people here tend to establish for themselves what is ‘normal work’ and what is ‘extra work’. Foreigners with small kids push that needle a bit too far for too many people imo. Tourists typically want to experience a wide variety of things because they are on vacation, so they shouldn’t be expected to end up doing their day fully like Japanese families with younger kids. I think that is something that some smaller businesses and younger customer-facing employees don’t always acknowledge.
Japan is really high on my family’s travel wishlist, so this was an interesting read. My kids are a bit older and for some reason have started to refuse sitting in a stroller at ages 13 and 17, go figure.
What I’m curious about is why only visit Tokyo? For me, the countryside is way more appealing and I think I could only manage a maximum of a week of Tokyo madness. I kind of already expected Tokyo to be a frantic place, maybe not a place to enjoy with a toddler.
I was hoping I'd hear from you in this thread :)
I'm curious about how much of OP's experience is due to the fact that their young family visited a megapolis in a conformity society during a working day vs it being a specifically Japanese thing. Eg, how does that experience compare with any other megapolis?
From Wikipedia's list of biggest cities by population, Tokyo is #3. My country's capital city is #70 (lol) and there's no highchairs, the galleries don't often have kids sections / downright hostile looks, narrow sidewalks will randomly close/ pot holes, the trains frequently have elevators broken good luck strollers, and the amount of people streaming to/from work is terribly unaccommodating for non-able bodied individuals. And that's from a highly individualistic and everything equity kinda place.
I avoided the tourist areas for the most part, I didn't go to Akihabara or Kabukicho for the obvious reasons you stated, I did go to Shibuya which was pretty busy but yeah nothing too bad, just large crowds (as one would expect). The suburbs were a lot easier, but there is fewer things to do there, as expected as well. It is just a bit sad that if you want to see the sights, so-to-speak, those are the places it's most difficult to navigate with a child, is all.
Never been in Japan but really enjoyed reading this post. Really interesting and showing Japan from different perspective at least for me.
Sorry you had a bad time. I think the specific parts of Tokyo involved probably make a big difference.
I'm not a parent, but my observations from having lived in Tokyo+Yokohama for a couple of years and having visited many times since is that toddlers are seen much more in residential areas. For example, the mini-park next to my friend's apartment has young kids in it for the better part of any day that it's not raining. My visits tend more toward walking in a random direction and seeing what turns up than hitting hotspots, though.
As far as strollers go, I don't recall seeing a lot of them. They show up, but it's more common to see kids strapped to their parents (younger end) or riding with them on a bicycle (older end), likely due to the issues you faced.
It's worth adding a bit of context for why people in Japan (and anyone who's spent substantial time there) often hesitate to voice even good‑willed, constructive criticism while in the country.
In Japan, what's considered rude isn't merely the content of the criticism, but its disruptive nature. Japan is a hierarchical, collectivist society that places a strong cultural emphasis on preserving face and maintaining social harmony (wa).
If you raise any kind of criticism or potentially awkward topic in a direct or confrontational way, especially in public or across status lines, you risk disrupting that harmony. That can strain not only your relationship with the person involved, but also your standing in the wider social circles you both belong to, including family and work networks.
Rome or Venice?
No? Do you mean me or the comments? I expected Japan apologia to an extent when I made the post. So some of it is hedging to avoid comments about how I didn't research or wasn't culturally aware enough and that's why I had the experience I did. But I don't or wasn't trying to mince words here, the brunt of what I'm saying is that Japan has a culture that needs work and shouldn't be praised, and that my travel experience was decidedly worse than the general "Japan is amazing" type posts.
Even a lot of the comments here, especially regarding the homophobia, no, it is not blatant and in your face, nor will a non-confrontational culture say something to you even if they wanted to, nor is it unsafe to travel if you're LGBT, but that isn't the point, what they wouldn't say to a foreigner or a stranger js not what they would say to a family member, or a friend, or what they would say online, or the policies they vote for.
Part of why I wrote this was to accept that the parts of their culture I did love were in the minority. Again to use the works of Nagata Kabi, it feels strange to say I relate to them, but I really enjoy them and emphasize with the situations, but that's not you know, what Japan actually is.
Sorry I wasn't more critical? I guess? I didn't coach my criticism in apologia, or wasn't trying to. It just wasn't all bad
Maybe it's just not wanting to seem like you're only posting to be a certified hater. But no, you're right not everywhere gets the same treatment. I found NYC is a pretty mid place too, it's dirty, cold, and expensive. The hotels suck, the traffic sucks. But people praise it to the ends of the earth.
On the reverse, anytime I mention Houston, people cannot help themselves but talk shit about it because it's car centric, or is in Texas, they will never not talk shit about those things. It's just whatever the prevailing sentiment is. For Japan, it had kind of gotten too good a rep, call it effective tourist marketing, and it became attractive to visit since the Yen is so weak.
I don't think it's a Japan thing per se. It's more that in "polite" areas, there are countries that are considered punching down and there a countries that are considered punching up. Indeed, making fun of the French is a free square, and so is shitting on America's unwalkable streets, but these are big rich white countries.
Have you visited Japan? There's a weird, idiosyncratic mix of incredibly cool stuff and really annoying things.
For example, almost every toilet has a bidet, but there are also plenty of restrooms without toilet paper or hand soap. Despite the lack of soap, they'll still have faucets with water to "wash" your hands!
The good and bad are often connected. Japanese flip phones were super advanced, so Japanese mobile keyboards still use a 12 key layout—which is better than QWERTY in my opinion.