Three Alternative Places in Tokyo You Have to Visit

Serenity matcha latte and sakura snacks

Once you hop off the plane at Narita airport there are several places eager-eyed tourists always gravitate to. The Shibuya Scramble crossing, Akihabara and, for some reason, the ramen chain Ichiran where people wait for up to two hours in the cold despite there being 10,000 other ramen shops in Tokyo.

Let me preface this blog post by saying I hate the phrase ‘hidden gem’, it’s one of my least favourites – alongside the dreaded ‘moist cake’ and the excruciating nature of ‘circling back’. There’s no such thing as a hidden gem in the vast expanse of Tokyo, but there are places often overlooked by international tourists who might not realise there’s more to do than knock back sake in the tiny bars in Shinjuku.

So here’s my list of three alternative places in Tokyo you have to visit when coming to Japan:

1. Jimbocho - The Town of Books 

Perusing the special edition James Bond booklets

A street filled with independent bookshops and cute stationary? I don’t need to say much more, but I will. Jimbocho has a whole host of specialty bookshops where print media still reigns supreme and you can find pretty much anything if you’re willing to sort through the endless labelled boxes speckled with dust.

Recently Sam spent over an hour raiding the archives of one book shop and came away with an original copy of a 1980s wrestling pocketbook that listed all the champion wrestlers from the year 1984. He assures me this is akin to discovering the Philosopher's Stone. The perfect day in Jimbocho would look something like this:

Head to Cafe Ataraxia for a special-origin coffee. 

When a coffee shop in Japan looks like this you have to make a detour

One of the best things about Tokyo is the endless supply of amazing cafes where the cafe owners take immense pride in brewing their wares. My tip is that the longer they spend making the coffee, the better it will be. Some of the best coffees I’ve ever had are in Tokyo and I’ve waited up to 15 minutes before for a single cup. I can assure you it’s worth the wait.

Cafe Ataraxia also has classical music playing on an old-school gramophone and some delicious snacks like a four-berry cheesecake and homemade chocolate cake. It’s a special and authentic Japanese experience that can’t be replicated by some of the more ‘Instagram-leaning’ cafes that all feel a bit soulless after a while. 

Check out the Independent Book Stores

Books lining the streets of Jimbocho

I can’t stress how many bookshops there are in Jimbocho. And if you’re a bookworm like me then this can easily take several hours to really make some headway, especially if the bookshops have a cafe attached to them.

Some of my favourites are Jimbocho Book Town, Kitazawa Bookstore, Book House Cafe and they even have an entire bookshop dedicated to cats called Anegawa Bookstores Nyankodo. So if you’re a feline lover with a hankering for some cat literature then this is definitely the shop for you.

Go to a Historic Tempura Restaurant for a Lunch Set 

A crispy batter thing of beauty

After traipsing around the bookshops, you’ll have worked up an appetite so I recommend heading to one of the best tempura restaurants in the city, Kanda Tempura Hachimaki. It’s always busy (a good sign) and the fact that the grease build-up from 80 years of frying can be seen coming out of the vents shouldn’t deter you in the slightest. 

The full tempura set which has conger eel, two shrimps, vegetables, fish and squid will set you back 2200 yen (around £11 in January 2025) which is for the ravenous diner, whereas the lighter option will cost you 1200 yen (approximately £6 in January 2025). 

2. Shimokitzawa - The Town of Vintage Clothes 

Feelings of inadequacy and vintage clothes

If there’s one place I definitely didn’t feel cool enough to be walking around it’s Shimokitzawa. Filled with artisan shops, highly-curated 2nd hand clothing stores and plenty of delicious food options and cafes – it’s where stylish people go to make themselves even more stylish than they already are. 

You can easily spend a whole day wandering the little lanes, pausing to snack on a Totoro cream puff at Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory or get a vegan (yes vegan options do exist in Japan!) french toast at Universal Bakes and Cafe. Some of the unmissable spots in Shimokitzwa are:

Ten to Sen.

I think about this bowl of ramen at least once a week

A ramen place that specialises in curry soup ramen which is a cross between ramen and all the favours of a Japanese-style Indian curry. Ramen purists would say this breaks about 15 rules of what a proper bowl of ramen should taste like but as someone who’s always waiting to have her next curry, this is the kind of fusion I can get behind. 

The broth is spicy, complex and has a depth of flavour which smacks you in the face – and the addition of the array of vegetables and spicy nuts gives you texture that sometimes I miss in a standard bowl of ramen. Vegans and vegetarians are also able to pull up a chair at this establishment, as there are plenty of customisable options allowing you to omit any meat or animal products if required. 

It’s a very popular place and opens at 11.30 am so my advice is to get there a few minutes before it opens to ensure you aren’t waiting too long for this excellent bowl of noodles. 

Sujigane Coffee Roaster

Don’t you dare ask for milk - especially almond or oat milk

When I say the guy who runs this place is a true artist, I don’t mean it lightly. I’ve never waited so long for two coffees and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Looking at the Google reviews, a lot of people agree with me. 

Kimm thinks he probably takes coffee a bit too seriously

Tyrone is a fan of their ‘punk coffee’ that punches you in the face

It’s the type of place that looks a bit intimidating at first. They make it very clear that THEY DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ADD MILK OR SYRUPS to any coffee apart from the lattes. I expect the owner doesn’t even want to make lattes, but this is his way of compromising. He hand selects each bean that goes into every cup and will discard any that don’t meet his high expectations. There’s also nowhere to sit down and they have skull-and-crossbones on their cups – this is truly the rock and roll equivalent of coffee making.

They have slogans on their merch like ‘Coffee or Die’ and ‘Hardcore Beanz’ and I expect the owner truly believes this philosophy. Watching him make my drinks was akin to watching Monet paint waterlilies or Maya Angelou recite ‘And Still I Rise’. 

Any of the Second-Hand Clothing Stores

Yes, I know this is a photo of toy fish - I forgot to take any picture of the clothes

It’s difficult to say which are the best shops for vintage clothes, as it’s dependent on a person’s individual preferences and style. There are so many places that when I first went I got a bit overwhelmed by all the choices and bright lights. 

Some ones that stuck out to me were TreFacStyle Shimokitazawa for vintage 1980/1990s stuff, Big Time Shimokitazawa for unique pieces and Kinji Shimokitazawaten for more general thrift items. The fun of thrifting is you never know what you’re going to come across so I’d be prepared to do some rummaging. 

Prices range from £30-£100 depending on the type of clothes you’re looking for. On average I’d say most items were £40-50 so it’s not the same as charity shop prices, but the quality and range of clothes is much better in Shimokitazawa. There are also several much cheaper places if you hunt for them. There’s a particular leaning towards 1980s/1990s style clothing and also Americana-inspired items like sweatshirts, jackets and jeans.

3. Shibamata - Town of Tora-san

The very famous Tora-san

Popular with domestic tourists, Shibamata is famous for its beautiful temple complex and also the fact it’s home to the character of one of Japan’s most popular film series ‘Otoko wa Tsurai yo’. It’s the longest- running film series in history with a single actor, with 48 films being made between 1969 and 1995. 

The films follow ‘Tora-san’, a travelling salesperson who’s searching for love but is never able to settle down — it’s something of a cult classic in Japan. There’s even a statue of him in Shibamata as soon as you exit the train station. 

Some fun things to do in Shibamata are:

Get a matcha at the Yamamoto-tei Tea House 

Budget matcha but not when it comes to taste

One mistake I always see tourists making is to pay over the odds for a Japanese tea ceremony that’s catered to Westerners. There’s a beautiful tea house in Shibamata that has great views of a zen garden where you get practically the same things in a tea ceremony but at a fraction of the cost. 

We paid 700 yen each for a matcha and snacks (£3.50 in January 2025) at Yamamoto-tei and it also granted you access to look around the house and gardens as well as your drinks. I’ve never known serenity like sipping a matcha whilst looking out on a perfectly sculpted Japanese garden and I highly recommend doing this at least once if you’re doing a Tokyo trip. 

Pay the robot dragon for a dance at the Shibamata Taishakuten Temple  

This dragon can certainly dance

One of my highlights of Shibamata was finding out they had a robot dragon where you pay 200 yen for a number of different dances. And I was certainly impressed by the range of movements this dragon could muster. 

In Sakura season (cherry blossom season) I imagine the temple complex gets incredibly busy with domestic tourists but it’s a stunning complex that’s well worth a visit any time of the year. 

We visited at New Years so they also had an incredible range of street foods including gyozas, candied fruits and massive squids on a stick that were all around 500-700 yen. 

Some of the street food around some of the bigger temple complexes can be a little on the pricey side. But the more local spots tend to be cheaper and have more interesting snacks to try.

The busiest street food stand in Shibamata was actually the jacket potato stand, with the queue snaking far down the street. I have witnessed the slow ‘Jacket Potatoification’ of the world in the past year or so and my theory is jacket potatoes are the new smash burgers of 2025 and beyond. You heard it here first. 

Anything can be improved by putting it on a stick

Visit Shibamata Haikara Yokocho - the old sweet shop 

Perfect for any sugar rush

If you like the old-time allure of a sweet shop and wondered what the Japanese equivalent is, this is as authentic as you’re going to get. The shelves are lined wall-to-wall with all the sugar highs you could possibly imagine and in any form you could possibly think up.

I’ll confess I don’t know too much about Japanese confectionery items apart from the ever-looming presence of the 10,244 different flavours of KitKats they have, including one that they recommend grilling in the oven. 

But if you’ve got a sweet tooth then this is the one-stop-shop for you. My personal favourites were the shinkansen-themed lollipops and the Kirby gummies, but alas I didn’t purchase anything due to my fear of already consuming 500 grams of sugar that day through various bakery items. 

Three Alternative Places You Have to Visit in Tokyo: A Round Up

If you’ve gotten this far, my advice is that out of these three alternative places you have to visit in Tokyo… visit them all. With many tourists opting to do the Japanese holy trinity of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto over two weeks it can be hard to plan out your days and feel like you’re packing enough in and not missing anything vital. 

Some of my best days in Tokyo have been places that aren’t so popular on the tourist circuit so don’t be afraid to veer off the beaten track a little. 

As long as you're close enough to a metro stop or JR Line (5-10 minutes walk is ideal) then you can reach practically anywhere in Tokyo in under an hour.

The train system is one of the best in the world and as long as you know what exit you need – although don’t talk to me about Tokyo Station, that's a whole other beast – then you’ll be fine. 

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Crash Rhino’s Top Seventeen Books of the Year (2024)

Introduction by Becky:

If I wasn’t married to Sam, I would hate him on the sheer fact that he reads too many books that it makes me feel bad about myself. Whilst I can average a good 20-30 books a year depending on how fixated I become on certain topics (for 2024 it’s been dictators, ‘supporting women’s rights and wrongs’ and the lives of male authors and how badly they treated their wives), Sam will have his nose in a book all year round so that he clocks up an impressive 52 books a year. Insufferable, I know.

So I can hand on my heart say that this list of Crash Rhino’s top seventeen books of the year isn’t one that has been cobbled together for the purpose of SEO. It’s a list born of countless hours spent at airports, on trains, on buses, and has some absolute bangers that will have Lee Child or James Paterson quaking at their laptops, crying about their nonexistent plot arcs.

There’s also some slight shade thrown in this blog post so strap yourself in. My favourite bit is when Sam refers to Tom McCarthy books “as thinking they're just a little smarter than they actually are.” Ouch.

And am I really that surprised that the number one slot is a literary epic that spans 900 pages? No, but at least it’s not another Thomas Berhardt which makes Sam incredibly morose and existential for about two weeks afterwards.

17. Terminal Boredom

An uneven collection - I found a couple of the middle stories a real slog. But the standouts here are fascinating, and ridiculously ahead of their time given they were written in the 70s.

The title story is one of the best creative looks at "screen culture" I've read. You May Dream is another highlight - Izumi's general vibe revolves around groups of broken youth desperately struggling through their post-universes, and it's a great vibe.

She's maybe a bit too strange and dark to get a true anglophone resurgence amidst the ongoing boom of Japanese women in translation (though Verso finally published one of her novels in English this year so hopefully I'm wrong) and that's a shame because there's a unique eeriness to Izumi's work, well worth a read if you're looking for experimental sci-fi.

16. Orbital 

I’m very conflicted on Orbital. There are flashes of gorgeous description, real life-affirming stuff, and I love how compact it is. 

The characters are however practically nonexistent, and it became quite repetitive for me despite its short length. It's a great concept - each chapter being one rotation around the Earth in space is brilliant - but I felt a lot was missing in the execution. Worth a read, I just don't quite understand the levels of hype surrounding it.  

15. Remainder

Predates it slightly but this is essentially Synecdoche: New York if it was a novel. A guy wins a massive payout after an accident and decides he wants to pay people to recreate things he can half-remember. 

Lots of very precise repetition going on here - spending pages to describe the cracks in wall plastering, that kind of repetitive. I'm a weirdo so I like that sort of thing, but I recognise it's an acquired taste - you'll find the narrator mildly to majorly insufferable depending on your tolerance level. 

McCarthy's novels always come off as thinking they're just a little smarter than they actually are for me. But I liked the themes he's playing with here, worth a read if you're looking for some light existentialism. 

14. Convenience Store Woman

Transports you to Japan's many konbinis with their immaculate shelves, bright lights and plastic wrap. I loved the narrative voice throughout. 

I tried Earthlings first and it wasn't for me - I couldn't gel with the childish narrator and how the abuse scenes were described from their perspective, it made me very uncomfortable. This was still odd but it felt much more controlled, with a clearer purpose (deciphering Japan's insane work culture and its results like Hikikomori) that didn't outstay it's welcome. It’s a great weekend book that you can fall into for a couple of days.  

13. Island of Missing Trees

A surprisingly cosy book despite some of its more harrowing plot points, focused on the history of Cyprus through the perspectives of a relationship across the Greek-Turkish divide, a London-based descendent and a fig tree. 

Adored the descriptions and any extract focused on Cypriot food and culture. The Happy Fig taverna is such a beautifully realised setting. Dialogue here is however terrible, and the London timeline was far weaker for me. Still a great book though, its strengths far outweigh any shortcomings. 

12. Wild Thorns

One of the most important Palestinian novels, first translated into English in the mid 80s. It actually got a bit of criticism at the time for being too generous in its depiction of the working conditions in Israel for Palestinians. 

A great book firstly for its deft focus on class relations between Palestinians under the occupation - it offers a very nuanced angle of the realities at the time. It goes beyond the idea of resistance - it asks whether there's a right way to protest, and explores how an apartheid regime like Israel's impacts the relationships between the innocent people who live under it. There's also some interesting insight into masculinity and how resisting through its lens can end up creating even more issues. Worth reading in the 80s, absolutely worth reading today.

11. Broken April

All about centuries old blood feuds and revenge killings between Albanian mountain tribes - the unbreakable cycle of death, passed down through generations via an unwritten code. 

Can pinpoint the exact moment I realised there was something incredible here with this description - "The world shone like glass, and with a kind of crystal madness, it seemed that it might begin to slip at any moment and shatter into thousands of tiny fragments" 

A brief but fantastic book, deeply unsettling. Have come to love what I've read of Ismail Kadare so far.  

10. Paper Menagerie and Other Stories 

A stunning collection with some of the most important short stories of the last couple of decades. The title story is obviously incredible, but the man who ended history is the standout for me - it should really have ushered in a new faux-documentary way of writing. Perhaps it still will. 

Very few misses in here that I can recall to be honest, both Mono No Aware and the Perfect Match are also impeccable, but the whole collection is worth reading. 

9. My Year of Rest and Relaxation

A woman decides to try and sleep for an entire year to essentially reset her life, and does so by continuing to escalate her prescription drugs intake.

This is a wild ride and I loved it. Treads the fine line between darkly witty and just a bit fucked up incredibly well. The dialogue is stupidly good but it's the strength and unique depravity of the narrator's voice that drags you in and refuses to let go. I need to seek out Ottessa's other work.  

8. Homegoing

Two sisters and their descendants are tracked across hundreds of years of the slave trade and its impact in West Africa and across the US. 

Hard to cling onto who's who here - I appreciated it more as a set of loosely connected short stories that often end too soon. In fairness I think there's something there thematically, in that I wanted to spend more time with most of these characters but their stories and voices were cut short. An excellent novel that deserves most of the lofty praise it's received in my opinion.

7. Greenwood

A generation-spanning eco-narrative about tree-felling in British Columbia. This comes close to something really special - it faltered for me with the pacing (without spoiling anything the structure is very clever, but falters a bit with a couple of sections really dragging for me) and far, far too many tree metaphors. One of the characters is called Willow - there's not a lot of subtlety. 

I still thoroughly enjoyed it though - there's a lot of variety given to each character's narrative, and some of the better-realised ones stuck with me for a while. Also devoured it, it's very readable. 

6. The Obscene Bird of Night 

I’ve been meaning to read this for ages and it got a new translation this year, so no better time to dive in. An utterly depraved book in both concept and writing style, where narrators shift without any explanation and the experience of reading is less experiencing a story and more being trapped in a labyrinth whilst simultaneously falling into an abyss. 

There's a few important through-lines here though, about the crimes parents commit on their children, the ramifications of Chile's colonial past, the importance of the imbunche and other folk monsters to Chilean psyche among others. Wouldn't recommend it to most but if you want a challenge it's a rewarding nightmare. 

5. Lord Jim at Home

Similar to what happened with Stoner a few years ago, in that this was first published to relatively minimal acclaim in the early 70s and has recently been "rediscovered" - hasn't quite reached a wider audience yet but I'm hopeful it will because it's excellent. 

Adored it - such a deeply weird novel, it's a bildungsroman mixed with a dark fairytale, and it's weird in that uniquely British way, full of unspoken expectations and stupid upper-middle class eccentricities. Unlike anything else I've read. 

4. To Live

It all comes down to the flow here. To Live progresses so perfectly, drags you so seamlessly from one altercation to the next that you're never bored for a second.

Yu Hua narrates decades of Chinese history, from land reform to the communist revolution and its aftermath, with some brutal scenes along the way. No word is wasted, it's just masterful in its precision. Essential reading if you're interested in Chinese history.

3. Giovanni’s Room

Ridiculous that I hadn't read this before now really, such a beautiful novel. 

Baldwin has that clear talent reserved for only the true greats where you'll read a couple of sentences and what he's saying is so painfully true to your experience of the world —but in a way that you've never seen communicated or managed to express in your own words before that you catch your heart in your throat. 

2. The Dispossessed

The hardest of hard sci-fi and all the better for it. I had a bit of a fascination with anarchism as a teenager (I know, hard to believe) and of all the reasonable critiques of the ideology one I could never stand was the small-minded retort that it simply wasn't possible on a societal scale.

The Dispossessed imagines the potential reality completely. It's an extraordinary achievement in world building anchored by an Oppenheimer-esque protagonist, and I catch myself thinking about it all the time now. Ursula is untouchable - she's a force of nature, undoubtedly one of the best to ever do it. 

1. Demons

Unfair to compare everyone else to Dostoevsky really. I've now read 3 of his great 5 and yeah Demons is indescribably good, perhaps my favourite of his to date - adored TBK but the depths of human evil that this dredged is something else entirely. 

So few writers, if any, can write people so completely - we're all too complex. That's what really sets Dostoevsky apart for me. It isn't just his impeccably precise style, it's the fact that all his characters, their feelings and motivations and the nature of the inexplicable corruption inside each of them, feel frighteningly real. Not an easy read, but the best things in this miserable life aren't always easy. 

The Idiot next, but I might wait a few years.

Crash Rhino’s Top Seventeen Books of the Year Recap

So there you have it, another seventeen books to add to your never-ending TBR pile. I also read a smattering of the books on this list and my absolute must-reads are: ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’, ‘Homegoing’ and ‘Greenwood’. Ottessa Moshfegh is officially my new author crush and I’ll be getting my hands on all her books in the New Year because I’m a bit obsessed with how good her writing is.

This is the first in Crash Rhino’s blog series of ‘Blogs You’ll Actually Want to Read’. We’ll be putting out some blogs each month on a whole range of different topics that don’t just focus on marketing and copywriting.

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