We’re already a month into 2023, and I’m just now getting around to sharing this. But 2022 was the year I started venturing out again—sometimes on writing assignments, sometimes just on personal trips—after two years of working remotely from home, going into the city less, and traveling outside Tokyo much less than I did in the preceding decade. If we’re being honest, I almost packed too many excursions into the back half of the year, as if to make up for lost time.
The face of Tokyo is always changing, and I’ve written elsewhere about some of the new things to come along here in the early 2020s. In this post, I thought I’d share a quick yearbook of sorts, with ten highlights specific to 2022 (keeping the list entries short, since my last Osaka post ran long).
1. Winter wonderland in Shinjuku
On January 6 last year, Azusa and I took the train into Shinjuku to get PCR tests ahead of a trip to Fujinomiya, to visit her parents for the first time since New Year’s 2020. Usually, we’ll get snow here once or twice a year, but I’ll be out in the suburbs when it happens. That misty Thursday, it felt like it was the thirteenth night of Christmas as snow fell on the annual lights display along Shinjuku Southern Terrace, dusting the trees and turning it into a winter wonderland.
2. Odaiba’s Venus Fort and teamLab Borderless close
The artificial island of Odaiba is one place the pandemic has hit hard, with several once-popular entertainment and shopping venues shuttering permanently. Though the Palette Town Ferris wheel was still standing last summer, it and Toyota’s Mega Web showcase and historic garage closed in 2021. The Venus Fort shopping mall followed suit on March 27, 2022.
Just a few years ago, the teamLab Borderless digital art museum had injected new life into the area, but it closed, too, on August 31, 2022. (This year, it’s due to relocate across town). We visited Odaiba in July to see the new Small Worlds Tokyo indoor miniatures park, and as we walked past some of these closed venues, it served as a reminder of how quickly time passes and sweeps things away. I think the last time we were in Odaiba was 2019, when the fountain was still flowing at Venus Fort (see above) and all these places were thriving.
3. The brunch search ends at Blu Jam Cafe (before it closes, too)
We were looking for places that serve a good Western-style breakfast or brunch in Tokyo, and in May 2022, we found this little restaurant called Blu Jam Cafe in Azabu Juban, near my dentist’s office. They used to have another location in Daikanyama, Shibuya, and it’s a restaurant that originally started in Los Angeles.
Just our luck, the place was on its last legs, getting ready to close at the end of June. I only got to eat there twice, but they made a mean breakfast burrito, not to mention some very filling dishes with salmon and eggs over diced hash browns. Haven’t had that kind of food much in Japan …
4. Rooftop view of Nishi-Shinjuku skyscrapers
I tweeted about this back when I still on Twitter semi-regularly (before it became Elon Muskville), but there was one day last July where I took some time to reconnect with the city just by walking all around Nishi-Shinjuku and Harajuku. On the west side of Shinjuku Station, I noticed a sign for the “Keio Sky Garden” up on the roof of the building. There wasn’t much to see in the actual Sky Garden, but they did have a few places where you could peek through the fence to see the station’s west side and the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku.
The reason I’m including this here is because they were doing some construction (maybe laying the foundation for a new building?), and it left me with a rare, unobstructed, elevated view of the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.
5. Stranger Things Cafe and bao in ShibuyA Fukuras
From July 6 to December 28, 2022, a pop-up café themed to Netflix’s Stranger Things operated in the restaurant Pronto in the Shibuya Fukuras building. After I caught up on the last three seasons of Stranger Things, I jumped through some midnight hoops to secure a reservation at the cafe, then wrote about the “Stranger Pronto” experience in a /Film article.
It was my first time visiting Shibuya Fukuras, and I found another good restaurant there on the 17th floor of the adjoining Tokyu Plaza shopping center. It's called BAO by CÉ LA VI and it serves a "fusion of the Asian bao and Western burger" on a rooftop terrace with a view of the Shibuya Scramble and the new Miyashita Park.
6. The 100-Year Yokai Legacy of Shigeru Mizuki
Shigeru Mizuki is the one-armed manga master whose comedy-horror series GeGeGe no Kitaro was instrumental in popularizing the iconography of yokai—a wide-ranging class of creatures from supernatural folklore—in 20th-century Japan. From July 8 to September 4, 2022, the centenary of Mizuki’s birth drew crowds to the Hyakkiyako (Night Parade of 1,000 Demons) Exhibition in the Tokyo City View observation deck in Roppongi Hills.
Mizuki was also a historian who had a pretty interesting life, all things considered. During World War II, he allegedly had a close encounter with a nurikabe, or living wall, in Papua New Guinea. And while there was no photography allowed in most parts of the Hyakkiyako Exhibition, they did have one spot where guests could have their own nurikabe sighting and take home a picture or two as proof.
7. An Aomori Nebuta Festival preview on Shibuya Center Gai
From July 20 to August 31, 2022, the gate to Shibuya Center Gai had an Aomori Nebuta float decoration up. I happened to be there during the day the week before we visited the real Nebuta Festival in Aomori, so it was like getting a small sneak preview of the main event, right at home.
There were also colorful Tanabata decorations from Sendai hanging along Center Gai, like they usually have up in the summer, and at one point, I ducked down an alley that was used as one of the animation models in The Boy and the Beast. Days later, Azusa and I would be in Tokyo Station, boarding the high-speed Hayabusa (or “Peregrine Falcon”) Shinkansen train for Aomori.
8. More Shigeru Mizuki and GeGeGe no Kitaro in Chofu
Chofu, Tokyo, where we live, is also famous for its connection to Shigeru Mizuki, who settled here until he died in 2015. One of the first times I visited Chofu was that year, to see the spring rose festival at Jindai Botanical Gardens. I didn’t know who Mizuki was then, but on the shrine road leading away from Chofu Station, they have statues of GeGeGe no Kitaro characters like Nezumi-Otoko (Rat-Man). There’s also a playground and public park nearby with other figures on display.
From October 8 to November 30, 2022, the Chofu City Cultural Center held a free exhibition called "The World as Seen by Shigeru Mizuki – Spinning Thoughts and Words." From November 21 to December 20, they also had an artist working on the grounds of Fuda-Tenjin Shrine to produce a GeGeGe no Kitaro sand sculpture. I walk by there all the time, so I could see the progress he was making over several days.
Mizuki was born in Osaka and raised in Tottori, and we stayed in both those places over the same 72-hour period last summer. Tottori has a whole Sand Museum full of such sculptures.
9. Balcony view of “Believe! Sea of Dreams” rehearsal at DisneySea
In early November 2022, we returned to Tokyo Disney Resort for the first time in three years, and I wrote a couple more articles about the new Beauty and the Beast ride and about what’s it like to stay overnight at the world’s only in-park Disney hotel. One of the perks of our balcony room overlooking Mediterranean Harbor in DisneySea was that we got to see the after-hours rehearsal of a new nightly show before it debuted to the general public on November 11. A photo I took of the “Believe! Sea of Dreams” show even enjoyed 15 minutes 24 hours of fame as the Picture of the Day on the Japan Today site.
10. Christmas with a giant robot at Gundam Factory Yokohama
This last one’s cheating a bit. Yokohama is its own city, Japan’s second-largest, but it’s part of the Greater Tokyo Area and easily doable as a day trip from the capital. We were there on Christmas Day and had been hoping to catch the Christmas market at the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse, but they’ve implemented some new Covid restrictions since the last time we were there.
You can’t freely wander into the market anymore. They have it blocked off, and we couldn’t get in because it was already sold out. So, we did the next best thing that day and went to see a giant, moving, marching, kneeling robot for its third and final December of operations at Gundam Factory Yokohama.
I’ll have more to say about that in the future. Tomorrow, I’m planning to head back to Yokohama on another assignment, where exploring the Gundam Factory lab is part of the research.
Stay tuned, and here’s to making more nice memories everywhere in 2023.