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Coffee in the Park

Tokyo is buzzing with people and energy. It’s exciting, except when it gets overwhelming. 

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is a tranquil escape spanning 144 green-filled acres. It’s filled with beautiful walkways, scenic ponds, and many, many trees.

What most people don’t know is that inside this serene park is a Starbucks that overlooks a small lake. It’s one of the best places I’ve found in Tokyo to get some work done.

This peaceful location is the perfect balance for the focus I crave when going into the work zone. Being able to concentrate intensely on work and then look up and savor the scenery of the national park is a unique experience… and, as with most things, even better with coffee. I always feel incredibly lucky when I work from here.

Although it’s in a beautiful spot, it’s somewhat out of the way, and you have to pay the park admission fee (only $3.50 for Adults. Less for students and children). These small factors eliminate a lot of customers. Leaving this Starbucks less crowded than ones you’ll find elsewhere. 

It has more comfortable chairs than most locations; big padded ones, and a couple of nice couches. In addition, there’s outdoor seating if you’d like to feel the breeze and smell the trees (the outdoor seating isn’t luxurious like the chairs inside).

I recommend coming here right when the park opens to get a good seat.

Pocket Change

I love Japan. Clearly.

But I do not enjoy the amount of coins that end up weighing down my pockets.

In Japan, coins are common with 100 yen and 500 yen coins being used instead of what would be paper bills in the USA ($1 and $5). I know the exchange rate means the 100 yen is more like $.70 and the 500 yen is around $3.50, but you get my point. Coins are used in lieu of paper bills for smaller denominations and that translates to tons of coins in your pocket or in some kind of small container.

I can’t stand having tons of change in my pockets, so I’ve tried using a small coin purse type thing and that was a fail. It’s too hard to quickly find the coins I want when I’m at the register paying for something and I end up just using another 1,000 yen bill and getting even more change back which is exactly what I didn’t want in the first place.

My buddy, Jack, discovered an excellent solution for this; a plastic coin holder. It holds multiple coins of all 6 denominations (1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 yen). That’s 2,830 yen when full. They sit tight and snug. Now you can find exactly which coins you need very quickly and you don’t have change jangling around in your pockets.

It’s a small thing, but super useful. I recommend grabbing one before you get to Japan, You can buy one here online: Japanese coin holder. If you forget, I believe Don Kihotei sells them.

Train Jingles

Details matter. That’s one of the things you notice very quickly in Japan. How precisely things are done, how exquisitely gifts are wrapped, how perfectly a beer is poured, how much time is taken to master the smallest aspects of any endeavor. In Japan, details are an art form.

That’s why I’m writing about train jingles. This small aspect of train travel can have an outsized impact on your day. Every jingle is written for one specific train station. Most of them are written by one guy! (Yes, crazy! and he was in a famous Japanese band before that as well).

Train jingles last roughly 7 seconds, are designed to be easy on the ears, and while they serve practical purposes like letting you know you’ve arrived at your intended station, or that the train doors are about to close and you better get on immediately or wait for another train, I like them because of how whimsical and beautiful they are and the fun references they make to pop culture.

A few famous ones to look out for:

Ebisu Station (Yamanotoe Line) - “Third Man” theme

Takadanobaba Station (Yamanote Line) - “Astro Boy” theme

Maihama Station (Keiyo Line) - “It’s a Small World”

Some stations will play a specific jingle only for a set time period and then change back to their standard one. Akihabara previously played part of “Koi Suru Fortune Cookie”, an AKB48 song, and Tokyo Toyoku subway line has played the theme from the Monster Hunters video game in the past.

If you want to go down this rabbit hole:

A website to listen to all the jingles from the stations on the Yamanote Line

A video about Minoru Mukaiya. The guy who wrote over 200 train jingles. He was in the famous old-school Japanese fusion band, Casiopea, back in the day as well. Casiopea influenced not only Japanese music, but also a lot of video game soundtracks including Mario Bros. and Sonic.

Unsurprisingly, the most clicked link from the previous issue was for this insane DJ set from the inimitable Yousuke Yukimatsu.

The 2nd most clicked link from the previous issue was for this unique, welcoming shop, Beams Planets Shimokitazawa.

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