Rockers, Hipsters, and Grandmothers of Tokyo

I’m in Tokyo with my sister. We’ve just had an accidental offal incident in Shinjuku’s tourist-jammed Piss Alley (which she handled well and I didn’t), and we’re drinking away the encounter in a tiny bar in Golden Gai, an infamous Shinjuku square packed with closet-sized bars, each with room for a mere four or five patrons. Chatting with the bartender, I say that I’m excited to check out a neighborhood called Shimokitazawa in Tokyo’s Setayaga district. He breaks into a broad grin, saying that he lives there, and I realize I’ve inadvertently stumbled into a discussion about the “cool kids” neighborhood. I mention another neighborhood called Koenji, and he smiles knowingly, patting down his vintage jacket. Feeling emboldened, I begin to gush about another neighborhood called Yanesen, which is supposed to be an off-the-beaten-track slice of old school Tokyo. He looks at me like I’m gushing about Staten Island and sidles down the bar to talk to his buddy. Just like that, I’ve lost my cool cred. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

 We never did make it to Yanesen, but we did explore a few of Tokyo’s quirkier neighborhoods in our week or so of just-past-cherry-blossom-season excursions. Here’s a rundown of our favorites, starting with Shimokitazawa, where I found the puppy café that stole my heart and ate into most of my budget. 

Cool Kids and Ambient Beats in Shimokitazawa

 Tokyo is clean as a whistle. Even the chaotic roar of chain-smoking men playing deafeningly loud slot machine games is contained in neat little cartoonlike buildings. Shimokitazawa, however, is a little dirtier, edgier, and—as I suspected—full of impossibly cool looking Tokyo hipsters. Just as my bartender friend said so, they hang out at a place called The Cage, a literal giant cage under a railway bridge containing a flea market by day, DJs by night, and hundreds of intimidatingly cool looking in-the-know kids (sadly, the pop up space is now defunct). The crowd spills out into a few pedestrianized streets lined with thrift stores, bars, coffee shops, used book stores, and a distinctly post-punk-gone-chic flair. The streets and buildings feel shrunk to me, as if Shimokitazawa’s been run through the wash and come out just a touch too small. I wonder if Tokyo hipsters would find Brooklyn just as oddly oversized as I mull over sunglasses and vintage pins in an Americana-themed store.

Down the street, on the third floor of a tiny building just off the main shopping strip of Shimokitazawa is Puppy Café Rio. The twenty or so pups living there are all rescues, and they run around the large café while people lounge in deckchairs. The space, which is designed to look like a little park, is impossibly kawaii: cute in a distinctly Japanese way. There’s even a television playing Disney’s Lady and the Tramp on repeat. My heart skips a beat when I see the smaller puppies sitting around the television on beanbags, wagging their tails, and watching cartoon dogs fall in love. You pay when you walk out based on the amount of time you spend in there. Beware that time seems to disappear and it’s not too difficult to blow a cool hundred cooing at puppies for a few hours. I go back with my sister several times and try to convince the girls who work there (via Google translate) to let me adopt the puppy I’ve become enamored with. They look at me like I’m slightly deranged and politely decline.

Apart from the puppy café, my favorite spots in the neighborhood are a ramen spot with a chicken logo and a name I can’t read (although the cheap and satisfying dish can be found on every street corner in the neighborhood), a café called Pebble, which is run by a surfer-looking Japanese barista-come-DJ who wears faded Hawaiian-style shirts with towns like “Tuscon” and “Reno” written all over them in big neon letters. He makes fresh juice drinks and spins trippy ambient Japanese beats while patrons sit around playing video games on their phones. I also hang at a more famous spot called Little Soul Café (which sells an impressive array of soul records and beer in dim, sexy, red lighting) and browse for vintage finds at the Shimokitazwa Garage, which hosts live gigs by local bands at night.

 Japanese Pancakes to Die for in Manga-drenched Akihabara

Tokyo’s famous alternative-culture hub Akihabara is a well-trodden mecca for Japanese manga culture, electronics, and sex-positive fetishism. Slightly away from the brightly colored department store-sized homages to all things anime (which on a bright day really make you feel like you’re wandering through a Sonic the hedgehog game), tucked under Akihabara station is a chic row of design boutiques, concept stores, and Café ASAN, one of Tokyo’s best spots for deliciously fluffy, thick, cake-like Japanese pancakes, typically slathered in flavored whipped cream, fruits, and chocolate or caramel sauce.

The quirky spot is loaded with plants, swing-seats that hang from the ceiling, and young, hungry patrons. Be prepared for a wait—the pancakes are made to order and take 20 or so minutes to rise to their heavenly, fluffy heights—but trust me, they’ll be worth it. Walk off the sugar high (or ride out the wait for a table) with a run around the unmanned pastel pink and blue stores across the street full of vending machines dispensing erotica, electronic gadgets, and all sorts of media. 

Indie Threads and Mom-and-Pop moments in Koenji 

A little further afield is the not-so-obviously-cool Koenji neighborhood, an erstwhile punk-hub that now houses an array of independent boutiques and vintage stores that aren’t explicitly Americana themed (Shimokitazawa’s cornered the market on baseball caps, sneakers, and branded T-shirts). My sister and I amble down the Koenji Pal Shopping Arcade and wind up with bags full of jackets (for some reason, the shopping arcade’s jacket game is seriously on point). Incidentally, another great spot for outerwear is Not Conventional (an upscale gender-neutral boutique in Harajuku) where I maxed out my credit card on a minimalist leather jacket. Sadly, the ubiquitous and impossibly stylish Tokyo trench that we hunted for throughout our trip evaded us.

 Etoile Street, just off Koenji’s shopping arcade, is crammed full of vintage shops, record stores, and food spots. We would have wound up eating there if our hearts weren’t stolen by a dingy little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mom-and-pop diner about half-way down the shopping arcade that hasn’t been touched by modernization since the fifties. It’s run by a couple in their eighties, and despite their prime location, it’s obvious they don’t get too much traffic any more. The husband clangs about the kitchen while the wife potters around tidying chopsticks and fussing over our drinks in a way that reminds us both of our grandparents. Our hearts melt into our simple bowls of ramen and we’re putty in their hands.