Me and my brother travelled to Japan in May 2025, primarily to visit the Expo2025 exhibition in Osaka, but we also made a detour to Tokyo. As usual I shot a bunch of video, and above is a chronological cut.
As is so often the case with my videos, it’s mostly observational and rather detached – as it happens, that’s also rather fitting for Japan: it’s difficult to penetrate the surface of both Osaka and Tokyo. The cities are huge and sprawling and the press of (polite) people will guide you along the path of least resistance to do a lot of shopping and eating.
We flew from Stockholm to Osaka via Helsinki, and didn’t bother buying stow-away luggage on the outbound trip. We did figure we’d shop a bit while there though, and the only option was to buy 2×23kg each, which seemed excessive. For some reason, it was cheaper to buy a return flight from the same city rather than from Tokyo.
There are a lot of arrows and instructions all over the place. The “less is more” approach to information hasn’t won much ground here, and in addition to boxes, arrows and lanes, there are people in uniform every 50 meters that keep announcing to “stay left” or “move along” – I’m assuming that’s what they were saying, since my Japanese is nonexistent.
The most impressive part of the Expo2025 was the giant wooden walkway they’d built around the whole area. Even though we were there in the middle of the week, the queues to get in to any pavillion were prohibitive, often requiring booking using arcane websites.
The Expo website is a complete mess and Reddit is replete with people complaining about their difficulties obtaining tickets or even knowing how to buy the proper ticket. It blows my mind that an event which has required years of planning, millions dollars and international collaborations galore, can screw up something as important as their main platform for selling tickets and informing visitors.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to end up in one the many shopping districts. And you will find blinking noisy machines enticing you to grab toys with janky claws. I swear these machines are rigged to drop the stuff on purpose.
In most bathing facilities (Onsen) you’re not allowed to enter with a tattoo. At our hotel you had the option of covering it up if it was small enough, but anything larger and you’re barred and can be thrown out. This seems to be changing though, and we saw a few young Japanese sporting larger sleeve and leg work.
Finding vegan food proved really difficult, which is a shame since Osaka is famous for its cousine. Even when I managed to order some noodles with tofu, they slapped a slice of ham on top of it as garnish. I’m not a picky eater so make do with whatever, but when so much of the culture is centered on sharing food, I miss out on a lot by not partaking in it.
Just like in Poland 20 years ago, a good option for finding vegan food is to look for places with a “healthy” profile. Here we’re in a small restaurant near Kitazawa, close to our apartment in Tokyo.
Don Quijote is a chain of discount stores all over Japan, with the larger ones having dedicated floors for electronics, books, toys and what have you. It wasn’t as cheap as all that, probably because they make a mint off of overwhelmend tourists who appreciate having everything in the same place, but it’s great fun just browsing and buying stuff based on packaging. If you’re looking for bargains, I’d recommend the second hand chain BookOff – especially if you’re looking for toys or clothing.
I have a hard time getting my head around the sexualisation of girls in Japan, and to my eyes it just looks profoundly fucked up. From the old men who rent (seemingly barely pubescent) girls as coffee dates, to kids in bunnysuits luring you into bars, to the really young streetwalkers in some areas, there’s a fetish of childlike girls that’s just straight up pedo. I’m sure one could read up on it and see nuance in the phenomena, and perhaps I’m just ruined by too many years on the uncouth side of the Internet, but it was jarring.
Most interesting places need to be sought out – this cigar bar was two flights of stairs up an anonymous building, and had only place for six. Many places are one-person run shops, which gives a very entreprenourial vibe to the city. Wherever there’s a small space, someone will start a buisiness.
Shinkansen was a great to experience, but in the end it’s just a train. A fast train, mind you, but a train nonetheless. And I don’t know why I imagined that it’d be noiseless – I probably had it mixed up with a maglev – but it made noise just like trains back home. Comfy and fast though!
Both cities have their power go through the air, which is incongruent with how orderly the street level is. Where each curb and colour on the pavement seems accounted for, the aerial wiring looks choatic and improvised.
One conspiracy theory we were proffered by way of explanation was that when Tokyo wanted to put the power underground, the concrete companies bribed the politicians to keep them in air – since the utility poles were made of armored concrete. And so it has remained.
Once you learn how to navigate the subways, you’re one step closer to be comfortable in the city. Instead of buying a period card we bought single tickets – this was more expensive, but it also made sure that we exited the right way when trying to leave a station, since if you don’t have the correct ticket it won’t let you out. (And if you’ve paid too little for your trip, there are machines that easily allow you to pay the difference by the exit.)
But even if you’re comfortable navigating the metro lines, the stations are still giant by any standard and take time to traverse. The Tokyo metro system handles 6 million passangers daily, and is dimensioned accordingly. Ridiculously large – and if you add some remodelling, repairs and rerouts to the mix, you end up staring at Google maps a lot.
We spent 10 days or so in Japan, split between Osaka and Tokyo, and my reaction was similar to the one I had when visiting New York: It felt like I’d been here before, as if I was an extra in a movie.
If I ever go back to Japan I’d love to make plans to actually do something or learn something. Perhaps a design project of some sort? A documentary work? I need a mission to guide my travels – I’m a pathetic tourist – and I’d make sure to learn more than “thank you” in Japaneese. English is not enough, and Google Translate can only take you so far.