After Miyu’s birthday,
a quieter few days in Tokyo

It feels like only yesterday that I went to Tokyo for Kano Miyu’s birthday concert last November, yet another year has already passed. Measured in days, it is a fairly long interval, but the memories in between do not feel like separate pieces. They run together in a single, continuing thread. Rather than feeling that a year has ended, I feel as though I have arrived at another point on a journey that has never quite stopped.

Before all this, my days were comparatively simple: go to the office, work, come home and work some more before the day was done. It was not a bad life, but little happened to change its direction. After discovering Miyu and beginning to travel to see her onstage, that everyday rhythm slowly shifted. The same ordinary days now had another destination waiting at their far end—the next trip to a concert. Having that to look forward to became part of what carried me through them.

The trips that began with last November’s birthday concert

Looking back, the birthday concert in Shin-Okubo on November 6 last year was a definite turning point. At the time, I had more or less fitted the concert into a trip to Japan I was already planning. I would see the show, return to sightseeing, then go home to ordinary life. After that day, the balance changed.

The performances became the centre, and my itineraries began to form around Miyu’s activities. I met fans who lived in Japan and spent more time with them before and after shows. In the process, I started using my Japanese again. A language I had let lie dormant slowly began to feel familiar in my mouth.

At last year’s birthday concert, I had barely been able to use it at all. I had studied it before, but after COVID-19 left me with few occasions to speak it, most of what I knew had slipped away. There is still a long way to go a year later. Even so, I can now carry on a simple conversation without a translation app, and the short exchanges at venues or while travelling have made Japanese a living language for me again.

Keeping at it, however gradually, gives me some hope that I might one day communicate more naturally. When I put the year’s events in order, there were far more concerts and appearances than I had expected. I did not attend every performance Miyu took part in, but even my own record of being there in person looks like this.

A gift that gathered the past year together

I usually prepare a gift and a letter whenever I go to see a performance, but I wanted to do something a little different for this birthday concert. I wanted to make something that could hold the past year in one place. That became a blanket I designed and had made myself. Choosing the concert photographs one by one, arranging them and finishing the design took longer than I expected, but it also gave me time to revisit everything that had happened.

A small blanket I had given her at the Fukuoka show in June influenced the decision too. I had not been entirely happy with its quality or size, and had thought that if I tried again, I wanted to do it properly. This time I was pleased with both the size and the finish. The blanket became a physical object in which the year’s memories could remain. The beach towel I had made alongside it meant something as well, though in the end I felt that the blanket was the better fit.

Four days and three nights in November Tokyo, again

As I had the year before, I planned to arrive in Japan on her birthday and stay through the weekend: four days and three nights. Last year, I had travelled on to Sakai after the birthday concert and ended up with a much fuller schedule than expected. Hoping that another performance might take place over the weekend this time too, I left myself a little extra room. I was only half right.

There was a weekend show, but Miyu was not appearing in it; the three-member SIS/T performance that did include her was on Monday, outside my dates. A similar mismatch had happened the previous year. This time I decided to spend the remaining days in the Tokyo beyond the concert. Seeing the birthday show would remain the reason I had come, but after it I wanted to walk at a slightly different pace.

Life before departure, and another beginning

Even preparing for this trip had not been easy. I had been to Fukuoka only two weeks earlier, and the strain had noticeably caught up with me. The fatigue had built to the point that my eyes remained badly bloodshot for almost two weeks. Just before departure, family commitments and a change of role at work arrived on top of everything else. There was little chance to catch my breath before it was time to leave again.

This Tokyo trip began at Incheon Airport. Departure was at 8:45 a.m., so the day already felt well underway by the time I left home. Allowing for the journey to the airport, I aimed to be there by 7:30 at the latest, and in the end arrived with a comfortable amount of time to spare. In the past, getting to the airport so early would itself have felt like an effort.

After so many trips to see performances, the routine now seems to have settled into my body. There is always something peculiar about travelling through a city that has not fully woken up. It falls slightly outside the usual rush-hour rhythm, a time when the people moving seem to have a traveller’s particular destination in mind. The airport in the early morning is a little quieter too, and that quiet makes the beginning of a journey feel more distinct.

A quieter morning at Incheon than I expected

The first thing I noticed on arriving was how uncrowded it was. On several recent trips, I had found long queues in the departures hall and had prepared myself for another wait. This morning was different. There were fewer departing passengers, and nowhere did the route through the airport feel blocked. The process leading through departure immigration went smoothly as well.

No long line had formed, and it felt as though the immigration formalities took barely five minutes. When things move that quickly in an airport, it can feel almost strange. I began to think that the day’s travelling might be easy, and that thought alone gave me some breathing room. I was flying with Air Premia.

On the way to the check-in counter, I noticed a clear separation between the queue for passengers who had already checked in online and the one for those who had not. Having done mine beforehand, I could drop off my bag quickly without joining a long line. A small difference like that changes how the whole journey feels. Travel is, after all, a succession of movements, and the places where time is spent waiting shape how tired one becomes.

With check-in finished quickly, the rest of the day felt less burdensome too. These preparations now feel like part of the concert trip itself. Departure immigration has become familiar as well. Taking out my passport, having my face scanned, putting my things back in order: the sequence of movements follows almost automatically.

What once made me nervous each time is now a stage I pass through with relatively little emotion. Yet a certain tension always remains. It is probably the feeling that I really am leaving now. Beyond this boundary, the time belongs to a journey rather than to everyday life. That gives the immigration checkpoint a symbolic weight even after so many crossings.

A little unhurried time airside

Once I was through immigration and into the duty-free area, my pace finally slowed. There was no longer any need to hurry, and I could think about what to do with the time before boarding. I decided to have a simple breakfast near the gate. At a nearby Paris Baguette, I picked up bread and coffee. It was hardly an elaborate meal, but a modest breakfast at an airport early in the morning has a meaning of its own: a last small adjustment to the rhythm of ordinary life before the journey begins. A piece of bread and a cup of coffee were enough.

Familiar faces at the gate

When I reached Gate 21, familiar faces began to stand out. These were people I regularly saw on trips to performances, people I could now recognise without needing to call their names. Meeting again in the same place at the same time, without deliberately arranging it, had happened often enough that the scene felt natural rather than extraordinary. I greeted a few fellow fans and chatted briefly. I had not even boarded the plane, but in that moment the trip already felt underway. Airports can begin a journey’s story before departure itself.

The first leg of this Tokyo trip was an Air Premia flight from Incheon Airport Terminal 1 to Tokyo Narita Airport Terminal 2. Departure was at 8:45 a.m., with arrival scheduled for 11:20 a.m. It was an early flight, but I had finished the departure formalities with time to spare and felt fairly calm. The aircraft was a Boeing 787-9. Both its exterior and its cabin gave an overall impression of being clean and well kept. Airfares had seemed to be rising generally at the time, so being able to fly in an aircraft in this condition for the price I had paid was quite satisfying.

Looking around while waiting at Gate 21, I began to spot familiar faces setting out on the same concert trip. We had not coordinated our departure or agreed to meet, but seeing people with a similar purpose gathering at the same time and place always creates a small sense of belonging. Once again, I found myself joining people I often encountered on these journeys. We had not booked our tickets together; our flights simply overlapped, and that made the meeting feel all the more welcome.

After this happens a few times, it begins to feel less like a chance encounter and more like the place where one naturally expects to meet. I also heard that Miyu’s Korean manager had left for Japan at around the same time that day. He was on a different airline, though, and had apparently departed on Jeju Air about an hour before us. Even this picture of people leaving on the same day for the same destination, each finding their own way there, felt like a natural part of these trips.

Boarding, and familiar hours above the clouds

It was only when boarding was called and I followed the line onto the aircraft that the feeling of movement really began. There was a time when I resented the hours spent on a plane, thinking of them as hours I could otherwise have had at my destination. Repeated trips gradually changed that.

Now the flight itself feels like part of the journey. If I deliberately arrive a little tired before departure, sleep tends to come naturally once I am on board. It happened again this time. Soon after take-off I closed my eyes and managed to sleep fairly deeply for a little over an hour.

Each seat had its own screen. I did not really have the energy to turn it on and watch anything, but knowing that I could if I wanted to was enough to put me at ease. The windows could be dimmed electronically, which made it easier to sleep even with strong sunlight outside. The service was simple but covered what I needed.

During the flight, I was given a cup of coffee and a cup of water; earphones were available on request. It was not lavish, but it was quite enough for the journey. What mattered most to me on this flight was being able to rest comfortably, and judged by that purpose, nothing seemed lacking.

Opening my eyes in the cabin and looking outside, I could readily accept that we had already left Korean airspace and were heading towards Japan. Crossing a national border once felt more pronounced; now even that boundary seems a little blurred. Going back and forth so often has made travelling through the sky feel less separate from ordinary life. That does not mean I have become indifferent. Familiarity lets me notice the smaller shifts in feeling more clearly. For a moment, questions passed through my mind: what scene would define this trip, and which moment would remain with me longest?

Landing at Narita, back in the air of Japan

The aircraft landed at Narita without straying far from its scheduled time. Simply arriving without a delay eases some of the tiredness of travelling. Looking through the window as we moved along the runway, I began to feel that I really had arrived in Japan again.

I had used Narita Terminal 2 several times, so the route through it was fairly familiar. In the short passage from the aircraft to the terminal, the airport’s particular air, its sounds and even the feel of the floor slowly woke my senses. The main itinerary had not begun yet, but at that moment the feeling was unmistakable: I was back in Japan.

Stepping off the aircraft and into the terminal brought me to the next stage: entering Japan. I had done this often enough that the procedure was not entirely unfamiliar, but the moment of joining an airport queue always carries a similar tension. I am not quite in the rhythm of the trip yet, but the travelling is not finished either.

It feels like standing on an uncertain boundary. Along the route I took through Narita Terminal 2’s immigration hall, the face-to-face procedures with staff were what first caught my attention. Seeing people lined up across the large space left a somewhat different impression from my memories of Haneda.

Judging by the queue in front of me, it looked as though this might take a while. There really were a considerable number of people waiting outside immigration. Perhaps several international flights had arrived at much the same time; even at a glance the queue looked long. I found myself preparing for a slower passage this time.

An immigration queue that moved faster than it looked

Once the queue began to move, however, a different pattern emerged. It was long, but it was shrinking more quickly than I expected. Several immigration desks were operating at once, and the staff worked with a smooth, practised efficiency. Rather than keeping each person for a long time, they made the necessary checks and passed on to the next. Immigration itself used to feel rather daunting.

I would worry about being asked questions, check my documents again and rehearse answers several times in my head. Now much of it feels like a set of familiar movements. While waiting, I take out my passport, prepare to remove my glasses as my turn approaches and look ahead to where I will place my fingers for the scan. The change is subtler than simply having more experience.

At first every procedure felt like a test; now it is closer to having adjusted my body to the airport’s rhythm. At some point, even registering my fingerprints and having my photograph taken began to follow almost unconsciously. Waiting in that line, it occurred to me that Narita and Haneda, though both gateways to Tokyo, had quite different characters. At Haneda, I remembered being able to complete some steps myself at a kiosk, with an overall route that had felt much simpler.

On this arrival at Narita, I showed my passport to a staff member and registered my fingerprints and photograph. Compared with my memory of handling some procedures at a Haneda kiosk, the route I followed here seemed to place more weight on direct interaction. I had not seen the whole airport’s operations, but from my place in the queue the difference felt quite clear. In that sense, Narita seemed less like somewhere determined to look brand new and more like a place carrying the weight of many years as an international gateway.

The relief of being admitted

By the time the queue had shortened and I finally stood before the immigration desk, most of my tension had already subsided. Finishing the required steps calmly and passing through without a problem made everything feel lighter. However often I do it, there is always a familiar relief in leaving with the entry stamp in my passport.

Passing immigration means more than finishing an administrative procedure. From that moment, I am no longer simply someone in transit; I have officially become a traveller inside the country. The feeling of crossing that small boundary does not easily grow dull, however many times it is repeated.

Customs, the last threshold

After immigration I continued to the customs area, collecting my luggage and checking whether I had anything to declare. This part once made me needlessly nervous too, but repeated journeys have made it easier to pass through calmly. Again, I had nothing in particular to declare, and the customs procedure was very simple. Following the staff’s directions through the passage brought it to an end, without any additional checks. In spite of the long queue I had first seen, the actual time taken was not especially great. The whole arrival process had turned out far easier than expected.

When I finished the arrival formalities and came out into the terminal, I finally felt I had reached the stage of entering Tokyo itself. One could say that a trip begins on arriving at the airport, but for me its rhythm really takes shape on the journey away from Narita and into the city. Once again, the natural choice was the Skyliner.

After entering Japan at Terminal 2, I headed towards the train without much deliberation. On my first visit, I remember spending a good deal of time researching each possible way from the airport into town. Very little of that is necessary now. My body seems to remember the airport’s layout, the route through it and the way to exchange my ticket before I consciously think about them.

Exchanging the Skyliner ticket, with a little time left over

Exchanging the Skyliner ticket felt familiar too. After collecting my reserved ticket from the machine, I still had quite a while before the train departed. There was no need to hurry. This slightly awkward stretch of waiting instead felt like a buffer in which I could draw together everything that had happened so far.

At such times I tend to make the same choice: head for the nearest convenience store. On a journey with several stages, I feel more comfortable assuming that I do not know when I will next get a proper meal. Once in central Tokyo, going to the accommodation, reaching the venue and meeting people could make the hours hard to predict.

Whenever a small opening like this appears, I prefer to eat at least a little. I bought a drink and something simple to eat at the convenience store, then returned to the platform. I planned to eat on the Skyliner and take the edge off my hunger while travelling. It was nothing substantial, but even that small preparation seemed to release a little of the tension in my body.

A familiar face in a familiar scene

On the way towards the Skyliner entrance, an advertisement I usually pass without much thought caught my eye: Shohei Ohtani in an Ito En Oi Ocha tea campaign. I had seen it many times on visits to Japan, but meeting it again just after arrival made me oddly glad. On early trips, such a scene had simply been a sign that I was in Japan.

Now another feeling has become mixed into it. Seeing that face again, so naturally part of the airport, the railway and daily city life, brought a slightly delayed recognition that I really had returned. It was no special event, nor a scene that demanded a photograph. Still, I thought, one familiar sight can quietly confirm the beginning of a trip.

In the few moments it took to pass the advertisement and descend to the platform, I found it rather amusing that I was seeing the same scene and having the same thoughts yet again. And so the journey into Tokyo by Skyliner began, surrounded as always by familiar sights.

The Skyliner, a dependable passage into Tokyo

As the train entered the platform and I settled into my reserved seat, my body relaxed almost at once. I had taken the Skyliner many times, but it still felt a dependable choice among airport trains. It was fast, the seats were well spaced and, most of all, it took me directly from Narita to Nippori.

Watching the scenery slide past without concentrating on anything in particular, I slowly accepted that I really was entering Tokyo. The change from the airport’s artificial surroundings to landscapes showing more and more traces of everyday life never stops being interesting. On this stretch, I still look out more as someone in transit than as a tourist looking for sights.

I took out my small meal and eased my hunger while going over the next movements in my head. Arrive at Nippori, stop at the accommodation to leave my bags, return to the station and continue to Shibuya. As I pictured that sequence several times, the train was already carrying us deep into Tokyo.

Nippori Station, where the next leg begins

As we approached Nippori, the announcement sounded and I prepared to stand. Perhaps because I had taken the Skyliner so often, even the movements around arrival felt familiar. Gathering the luggage that had accompanied me from the aircraft left only the short walk to the accommodation ahead. Stepping off at Nippori brought the journey begun at Narita to a clean close as one complete stretch. Most of the airport tension and the lingering feeling of the flight seemed to settle here. As always, the Skyliner had efficiently finished one leg while giving me room to prepare for the next.

After arriving at Nippori on the Skyliner from Narita, my first destination was the accommodation for this trip. The long journey had already left me tired. Check-in was still some time away, but I thought that if I could at least put down my bags, the rest of the day would be much easier. After travelling repeatedly, I have come to understand physically how leaving one’s luggage first can shape a whole day’s rhythm.

The accommodation was within walking distance of Nippori Station, in a quiet residential neighbourhood a little way off the main road. My first impression was not of a glamorous area or somewhere strongly defined by tourism, but of a neighbourhood where ordinary Tokyo life remained visible. That kind of atmosphere always puts me at ease. Even in a city I am visiting for the first time, it gives me the feeling of having stepped into a place where people actually live.

An unexpected language barrier before check-in

It was not yet check-in time when I arrived, and cleaning was still underway inside. There was a moment that caught me off guard: the person doing the cleaning was neither Japanese nor able to speak English. Meeting a member of staff who spoke only Chinese left me briefly at a loss. I expect some language barriers when travelling in Japan, but finding myself with neither Japanese nor English to work with is less common.

Fortunately, a translation app let us establish the basics. I switched it to Chinese and simply checked whether I could leave my luggage there, go out and return later. It was less a long or complicated conversation than an exchange of the minimum information we needed. The fuller details about check-in time and the house rules had come beforehand from the Airbnb host, rather than from this encounter.

According to the host’s instructions, check-in began at 4 p.m., while luggage could be left from 11 a.m. That earlier time had already passed, so I decided to leave my things, go out for a while and return in the evening. To be honest, I did feel a little uneasy as I walked away from the bags.

Entrusting luggage to accommodation where I had not yet checked in, without a fully shared language, was not an entirely comfortable choice. The thought that something might go wrong crossed my mind. But travelling, as ever, requires a certain amount of trust. In the end, the choice was sound: when I returned after the day’s plans, the luggage was exactly where I had left it.

A room for three, much larger than expected

When I formally checked in and stepped inside, my first thought was how much larger the place was than I had imagined. Tokyo accommodation has a strong reputation for tight spaces, but this was almost an exception. Even with three separate large beds in a room designed for three people, it hardly felt cramped.

I wondered whether it might be the most spacious accommodation I had used on any Tokyo trip. We could leave suitcases open and still move about easily, and sorting our belongings did not mean constantly getting in one another’s way. That breathing room matters when trying to conserve energy while travelling. In a small room, even the simplest movement can add to one’s tiredness.

The accommodation was on the second floor, with a window looking directly down onto the neighbourhood lane. An ordinary Tokyo residential scene lay outside, and it left a curious impression on me. This was the Tokyo where people lived, rather than the Tokyo seen at sightseeing spots. I also enjoyed watching the view change a little between morning and evening.

Most of what we needed for everyday life

Looking around the accommodation, I found almost all the basics a traveller would need. There was a washbasin and toilet, of course, and a microwave made it easy to heat simple food or something bought at a convenience store. There was no washing machine, but on a trip this short that did not feel like a major drawback. Some people might have missed a television; personally, it caused me no difficulty. I rarely turn on the TV while travelling anyway, and after a day out there is usually plenty to do: wash, rest or put things in order. If anything, the absence of a television made the space feel tidier.

I was happy with the beds as well. The mattresses were suitably firm, and the bedding and pillows had been neatly arranged. Ultimately, the most important job of accommodation on a trip is to let one rest properly. I felt that this place fulfilled that basic role well.

The steadiness of staying in Nippori

The Nippori neighbourhood around the accommodation was far from flashy. Instead, it had an unpretentious, everyday atmosphere. There were plenty of relatively inexpensive restaurants nearby, and convenience stores and small shops close at hand made the practical side of staying there easy. At night it was neither excessively noisy nor so quiet as to feel deserted.

For a traveller, that balance is a considerable advantage. I could eat something simple near the accommodation and return late without feeling uncomfortable. Being close to Nippori Station also made getting around straightforward, with little effort needed to set out for another part of the city the following day.

Once I had left my luggage at the accommodation, my body felt much lighter. It was still too early to check in, but simply putting the bags down seemed to take away a noticeable part of the fatigue. It was time to return to Nippori Station and take the JR Yamanote Line to Shibuya, a journey of about thirty minutes.

That is hardly a long trip within Tokyo, yet this stretch always changes the rhythm of my travels. If the journey from the airport to the accommodation is the process of arriving, the train from Nippori to Shibuya feels like a signal that the actual itinerary is beginning. This time, with an important performance awaiting me at clubasia in Shibuya, the ride meant more than simply getting from one point to another.

Towards Shibuya in another season

Boarding the Yamanote Line brought the familiar scene around me: a train circling the city along its green-marked route, people moving between work and daily errands, and travellers naturally mixed among them. After several Tokyo visits, I feel that the Yamanote is inevitably the line I use most. Wherever I go, I seem to pass through it at least once. On the train, a memory of September suddenly returned.

I had been on my way to Shibuya then too, but the circumstances had been entirely different. The heat of midsummer still lingered, and sweat had poured down throughout the walk from the station to the venue. Some kind of festival seemed to have closed the roads as well, and I had needed to push through crowds much larger than usual. I remember wondering several times why it had to be that particular day.

This time it was November. Tokyo was still a little warmer than Seoul, but incomparably more comfortable than September’s heat. Even last year’s birthday concert and Sakai performance around this season had left me remembering how strangely long the warm weather lasted. This time I could feel in my body that the season really had changed. That difference alone made travelling easier.

A brief connection on the train

Not long after the train left, I was lucky enough to find a seat. Then something happened that made this particular ride a little special. Nearby was a family who seemed to consist of an American husband, a Japanese wife and their two daughters. One child was still young enough to be in a pushchair; the other was old enough to talk.

After a while, the older daughter looked as though she wanted to sit down. Since I had a seat, I naturally stood and offered it to her. Her father, standing beside her, looked rather tired too, so I offered him a seat as well. Being able to communicate in English helped a great deal here.

Without needing Japanese or relying entirely on gestures, the conversation came much more naturally. As we talked, they told me they were from North Carolina in the United States. They had been visiting his mother-in-law in Japan and were now returning to the airport. That explained their suitcases and the tiredness of the journey.

We talked about how we had come from Korea and could travel between Korea and Japan relatively often because the two countries were close. During the conversation, the older daughter studied me particularly closely, then suddenly said that I looked French. The unexpected remark made me laugh, and softened the atmosphere on the train.

Short conversations like this sometimes remain clearer in memory than the route taken or the scenery seen along the way. Time passed more quickly than I expected as we chatted. Before I knew it, the train from Nippori was approaching Shibuya. Thirty minutes was not a long journey, but it was enough to feel the change of season, revisit earlier memories and exchange a few words with people I had never expected to meet.

A familiar Shibuya, seen from another exit

After arriving at Shibuya Station, I came out through a different exit from my usual one. I visit the area so often that it tends to feel like somewhere I already know, yet a single change of exit can give the scenery a completely different face. As I found my direction and walked, something both familiar and unfamiliar passed at the edge of my vision. The moment I saw the stepped space, I recognised it: a makeshift stage at the front, people sitting casually on the stairs.

There was not even time to wonder whether such a place had always been there. This was it—the very spot where Trot Girls Japan members had been filmed watching Korean singers perform a busking set. A place I had only seen on video suddenly lay before me without warning, and I found myself smiling. The shape of those steps was impossible to mistake.

I had not deliberately come looking for it, and it had not been part of the day’s plan. That made the encounter more remarkable. At an unplanned stop, a scene in memory overlapped with the real world. These occasional moments on a trip create memories an itinerary can never manufacture.

A street live was taking place here again that day. A fair number of people had already gathered before the stage, while others sat naturally on the steps to listen. Neither performers nor audience seemed overly tense. It looked like a scene expressing Shibuya’s own rhythm.

Pressed for time, keeping the scene in my eyes

Unfortunately, I did not have much time. An important part of the day was coming up, so I could not stop and listen through to the end. I stood briefly to take in the atmosphere, the shape of the space and the expressions on people’s faces, then had to be content with a few photographs. I was certainly sorry not to stay for the performance. At the same time, I felt that simply having found the place in person meant something in itself. The thought followed naturally that on another visit to Shibuya, I could put it into my plans and spend time here without having to hurry.

The venue was farther from Shibuya Station than I had expected. Following the map and walking on, I watched the familiar scenery gradually change. After the busy shopping streets gave way to narrower lanes, the atmosphere began to shift, as though telling me the venue was close. Eventually I reached clubasia. Several Japanese fans were already waiting outside.

Some had come up from Okinawa; others had travelled from Kansai. As always, a venue has a way of bringing faces together again after a long interval. We sometimes chatted online, but meeting again here in person brought a particular warmth. Even a brief greeting was enough to make it feel real: I was back in this place again.

Merchandise sales had not started, so there was a limit to what we could do outside the venue. But this was not simply time spent waiting. I was also joining a group birthday-gift project organised by a Japanese fan.

Adding messages to a birthday board at clubasia

Last year, Korean fans had taken the lead in preparing a shared birthday message board. This year was a little different. A Japanese fan had arranged the board for Miyu, with everyone writing their own notes and sticking them on. Each person used their own language and their own way of expressing what they felt.

Before writing, I hesitated briefly. There was more I wanted to say, but I had already put most of it into my letter. Above all, this was space shared by many people. In the end I chose to write two simple, clear messages: one in Japanese and one in English.

I briefly considered adding another in Korean, but decided that this was enough for this year. Last year’s experience played a part in that choice. Some people who had planned to write messages arrived late, and I had ended up filling several sheets on my own. This time everyone was contributing a little, and I did not want to disturb that balance.

I stuck my two notes onto the board, letting this year’s shared message project leave my hands. Once that was done, the next task came naturally to mind: getting cash for merchandise. Finding a convenience store near the venue was not difficult. I came across a familiar Seven Bank ATM and was able to withdraw yen without a fee.

I learned later that merchandise could also be bought by card this time. Cash-only sales had been so common at other shows that I had prepared money without much thought. In the end, it made little difference. Cash or card, the spending would have served the same purpose.

Merchandise sales begin at three

Sales opened at 3 p.m. There was a range of merchandise again, with a prize draw available after spending a certain amount. With luck, one could receive a ball bearing Miyu’s handwriting and signature. I decided in advance to limit myself to three attempts. Finishing in one or two would be ideal, but if not, I would stop at the third. Luck of this kind rarely comes easily to me. Even as I watched people ahead succeed on a single try, I failed on all three of mine.

For a moment I considered trying once more. But that would mean buying duplicates of the same merchandise, without any noticeable improvement in my chances. I stopped at three. I would be lying if I said there was no disappointment, but it was a limit I could reasonably accept.

Official merchandise made with a photograph I had taken

Among the merchandise, however, one item felt especially meaningful. It used a photograph I had taken myself at the Asia Influencer Festival on August 29: Miyu standing onstage in a red dress. I had known before travelling that the photograph would be made into official merchandise. I had been contacted beforehand, and asked whether I had any other photographs that might be used. There was no financial payment or special compensation, but having one of my photographs become official merchandise meant enough in itself. I hoped that the records I made might continue to find another life in this way.

The time before the performance

With the merchandise bought, an awkward stretch remained before the concert. This interval always feels much the same: anticipation mixed with tension, a space where it is hard to say where waiting ends and the main event begins. However often I go to concerts, I do not quite grow used to it. We gathered outside again and spent the time talking.

When I unfolded my cheering banner, the Japanese fans around us looked at it with interest. Some took photographs; others came over to talk. While we were passing the time that way, something unexpected happened. A Japanese fan offered me the signed ball he had won.

At first, I asked several times whether he was really sure—whether it was all right to give away the only one he had. Only after checking repeatedly could I accept the kindness. Having come away empty-handed after three attempts, I felt the gift all the more deeply. This was the first time we had properly introduced ourselves in person, but he was not a complete stranger.

We had never exchanged direct messages online, yet he had regularly reposted my updates and left thoughtful comments. Although this was my first time seeing his face, a certain connection and trust already existed. That made the ball feel like more than simply a piece of merchandise. The people around us took it naturally too.

Among those who had come from Korea, the feeling seemed to be that I should be the one to receive it. And so I found myself holding a signed ball by a route I had never anticipated. Even as I write this, the feeling of that moment remains quite clear. Good fortune arrived only after I had given up, and perhaps that is why it will stay with me longer.

Before the concert, the first thing to check was, as ever, cash. Japanese venues still often require it, including for merchandise, and it can be difficult to know whether cards will be accepted until one actually arrives. With that just-in-case thought, I decided to prepare some again. I went to the Seven-Eleven Shibuya Maruyamacho store, not far from clubasia. It let me get the cash I needed before moving on, without having to wander around searching for an ATM near the venue.

Seven Bank and Toss Bank, now a familiar combination

Exchanging currency used to be one of the first things I thought about when preparing for Japan. I was accustomed to visiting an exchange counter in Myeongdong, or ordering currency through a bank app and collecting it at the airport. Once I added the question of which day’s exchange rate was best and how much cash to change, there was quite a lot to consider before even leaving. On recent concert trips, that preparation has shifted towards withdrawing the yen I need from a Seven Bank ATM after arriving in Japan.

Instead of calculating how much cash to carry before departure, I prepare yen in a foreign-currency account and take it out locally. That feels much easier. I exchanged yen in advance in my Toss Bank foreign-currency account, then used the linked card at a Seven Bank ATM in Japan. On this withdrawal too, I received the yen without an additional fee.

With my particular card on that day, not having to think about an extra charge made it convenient. The ATM’s screen was fairly intuitive, so even someone not used to Japanese could get through the steps without great difficulty. Inserting the card, choosing a language and entering an amount took only a few touches. Seeing that there was no fee notice gave me another small, slightly unnecessary moment of reassurance.

Water and tea, a small preparation before the concert

While withdrawing cash, I also bought drinks for before the performance. Once the concert began, leaving my spot might be difficult, and a live show could use more energy than expected. I chose a bottle of water and a bottle of tea and placed them at the till. Such a small preparation makes a performance much more comfortable. Simply being able to drink when thirsty changes one’s concentration. When the plan is to stand for a long time enjoying a show, these minor decisions make a difference one can feel later.

A crossing that stays, while my own time changes

Whenever I come to Shibuya, I ask the same question: why are there always so many people here? In truth, the question is not only aimed at the scene, but at myself for returning to it. The crossing has always occupied the same place, and people have always hurried through it, while the person I am as I pass among them changes a little each time.

In 2018, 2019, then 2024 and 2025, I stepped onto the streets again across the years. Shibuya remained crowded; when the light changed, everyone crossed together as if by agreement. Facing that familiar scene, I now feel more than I did the first time I saw it. Because I have seen it so often, time itself seems to appear before the people do.

The lanes on the way to the venue

This visit to Shibuya was a little special because I had a clear destination. As usual, the walk towards the venue led into the lanes around Dogenzaka. Step just once off the dazzling main streets and the atmosphere changes quickly. Signs sit lower, streets narrow, and pubs, live houses and small bars follow one another in layers.

I like these lanes because they show that Shibuya is more than simply a big city. Behind the enormous crossing are streets that retain the warmth of everyday life. I was on my way to a performance, but rather than walking as fast as possible, I deliberately slowed down. The lights passing through the lanes, the marks left on walls and the faces of people moving between them all began to draw my eye.

The first year I came to Shibuya, everything felt unfamiliar. The people, the sound and the atmosphere were all too much. After coming back repeatedly, that strangeness has given way first to a kind of reassurance: yes, this place is still like this. Yet there is always at least one new scene.

Coming here for a concert has made Shibuya more than a sightseeing destination; it has become somewhere memories accumulate. Parts of the area have also appeared in music videos, so individual streets no longer look like scenery I can simply pass by. When music and remembered images overlap, the city itself can seem like a stage.

Carrying the concert across the crossing

The Shibuya crossing I passed before and after the show had entirely different faces by day and by night. In daylight it seemed an emblem of a city constantly busy. Encountering it again after the concert, I oddly felt it moving more slowly. There were still plenty of people; it was probably my own steps that had changed.

With the afterglow of the performance still in my body, Shibuya looked clearer than usual. The lights were brighter, and laughter and footsteps reached me more distinctly. I even thought the scenes I had not photographed might remain with me longer. Here, I often feel that some moments are enough without being recorded.

We had finished buying merchandise and already received our entry numbers. An awkward amount of time remained before the performance, and the mood was drifting naturally towards resting at a café. But we had not yet had a proper meal. With the show scheduled for the evening, I thought that going in like this might leave us short of energy halfway through.

It seemed better to eat something, however simple, while there was time, rather than merely take a break. Looking slowly around the streets near clubasia, we found Gusto, a family restaurant in a fairly conspicuous spot. For all my trips to Japan, I had hardly ever been inside this typical Japanese kind of family restaurant, which made me curious.

A family restaurant upstairs

Gusto was on the second floor. Following the stairs up brought us into a comparatively spacious room, with generous gaps between tables. Perhaps because it was still before the concert, the atmosphere inside was fairly calm. There were groups of diners, but they seemed focused on their own meals rather than making much noise. My impression was that it suited a brief chance to catch one’s breath before a show.

Ordering on a tablet, familiar yet new

Each table had a tablet, and all ordering went through it. The menu was primarily in Japanese, but its pictures and photographs were well arranged and made it easy enough to use. I rather enjoyed browsing slowly and discovering dishes I had not expected. I ordered shirasu pasta. Shirasu are tiny young fish, and I wanted to try something light using an ingredient that felt characteristic of Japan. Several of my Korean companions chose cold noodles, while one person who had already eaten elsewhere ordered only a drink. Different appetites and preferences found their places on the same table.

As it happened, the seating naturally divided into Japanese and Korean sides. We had not arranged it that way, but sitting with people whose language was easiest made the time more comfortable for everyone. There was something quietly striking about sharing a space while talking in our own languages and eating at our own pace. We had the same purpose ahead of us—the concert—but I thought it was quite all right for the route towards it to differ a little like this.

Self-checkout, after a moment of uncertainty

When we finished eating and it was time to leave, another detail caught my attention. Payment, too, was handled at a machine near the entrance rather than directly with a member of staff. I hesitated for a moment, wondering where I should pay, until a Japanese acquaintance beside me helped quite naturally. With that assistance I paid by card without any problem. It seemed like a system that might be even easier once familiar, and gave me a brief, practical sense of how Japan’s family restaurants worked.

The meal at Gusto was not so much a memorable discovery of remarkable food as exactly the right time to get myself ready for the concert. Food that was neither too heavy nor too slight, a space that was not noisy, and a location close to the venue: together those conditions made it a satisfying choice. Walking back towards clubasia afterwards, I felt ready at last to meet the performance.

Entry begins

As always, admission before the show proceeded in ticket-number order. I usually end up with a late number and try not to expect much, but this time mine was unexpectedly early: number 10. It was the best entry number I had ever received. Remembering all the shows I had watched from number forty-something or later, swallowing my disappointment, that number alone made me feel lighter.

Of course, others were ahead of me. One Korean fan entered at number 2, and several Japanese fans had single-digit numbers. Even so, I was more than satisfied with 10. One of the earlier numbers was absent, which moved things along faster than I expected.

After buying the compulsory drink voucher for 700 yen at the entrance, I could go straight inside. I had the voucher, but the drinks counter was not open yet. Getting a place mattered much more at that moment than waiting for a drink. On first entering, I briefly lost my bearings and looked around.

Miyu’s Japanese manager happened to come into view, so I asked him the way and followed his directions towards the stage. Before the show that day, whenever I saw him I greeted him in Japanese and thanked him for all his hard work. His expression seemed more relaxed than before. Even a small greeting like that became a natural part of my memory of waiting for the concert.

At the very front of the standing area

Being tenth through the door, perhaps I could reasonably have expected a place in the front row. Finding my own favourite position still empty, however, was pure luck. A gap remained among the Japanese fans already inside, and I took it without hesitation: between the far left and the centre, facing the stage. That is the spot I personally like best.

Miyu usually holds the microphone in her left hand and often moves to her right when facing the audience, so from here I can see both her expressions and her movements particularly well. It is a sense I have picked up almost physically over repeated shows. Merely finding that place free made it feel as though half the day had already gone right. I hung the extra-large cheering banner I had brought on the rail right in front of the stage.

A structure that looked like a large amplifier stood at the front, and I set the banner there thinking it would be visible enough. A little later, someone who seemed to be part of the concert staff approached and politely asked me to take it down. Hearing why made the situation better rather than worse: Miyu would be climbing up there to sing later. Losing somewhere to hang the banner became an unexpected bonus.

These sections protruding at either side of the stage were so close to the audience that the gap felt like barely ten centimetres. I had not chosen the place with that in mind, but had ended up securing a position from which I could see the performance at the closest possible distance. It was a stroke of accidental luck rather than any clever planning.

Only after the performance began did I fully understand how much that choice would shape the entire show. I thought I might have a moment to breathe after taking my place, but the room soon began moving again. More people entered, gradually filling the space and increasing its density from the front row to the back. This was another all-standing show, with no seats, so admission necessarily took time.

Entry was controlled so that everyone could settle as safely as possible, leaving a fairly long wait before the start. Looking behind me, I could see the Korean fans who had made the trip finding their places one by one. Some would ordinarily have stood in the second row or farther back, but I also saw Japanese fans at the front naturally make room for them. Several of us ended up watching side by side in the front row.

Though no one had arranged it, a curious sense of togetherness formed in that space. From the front of the stage, I could feel energy building in the room even before the lights went down: sound checks through the speakers, staff hurrying back and forth onstage, faces unable to conceal their anticipation. However often I experience it, the air just before a concert never becomes ordinary.

A long wait that did not feel dull

Even after finding our places, we waited for about another thirty minutes. Standing shows certainly take longer than seated ones to admit and arrange the audience, and the gap before the performance grows accordingly. Had I come alone and been surrounded by strangers, it might have felt long and tedious. That day was different.

Around me were Japanese and Korean fans whose faces I had come to know over several meetings. We traded light jokes, looked at one another’s cheering props and laughed. Some took photographs, while others quietly talked about what they hoped for from the show. Passing the time like that, we were soon approaching the start.

Hoping to take photographs, but never receiving permission

I had gone into this concert with one particular hope: perhaps photographs or video would be allowed during some part of the performance. In a livestream before the show, I had briefly seen Miyu making a note about whether filming would be permitted. I cautiously hoped that, as at last year’s birthday concert, a few original songs might be opened to cameras.

With that possibility in mind, I kept my camera in my hands from the start. The room offered nowhere convenient to put my bag, and setting it on the floor then retrieving the camera later seemed impractical. So I waited holding it, but no announcement allowing photography came before the concert ended.

I held the camera throughout the performance, yet the moment to press the shutter never arrived. I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed. Of all the stage outfits I had seen Miyu wear, this one particularly deserved the word rock star. The wish to preserve even one photograph of her like that kept circling in my head.

But without permission, having the camera in my hand did not mean I could use it. I was disappointed and followed the rules that day. Instead, I thought that at the Seoul concert in January, I would record as many scenes as possible whenever photography was allowed. The desire to keep a photograph of the outfit and expression before me never faded before the performance was over.

A performance that felt unmistakably Miyu

At last the lights went out, Miyu and the band appeared onstage, and the show began. The opening number was “It’s a New World”. The energy was strong from the start, and in that instant the air in the room changed completely. Through to the final song, “Terminal”, Miyu delivered sixteen songs without letting up.

There were short talks between numbers, but the overall focus was on singing. Every time I watch someone perform so many songs in succession, the achievement strikes me afresh. The selection was noticeably different this time as well. Earlier solo concerts had included some SIS/T songs; this set left those out entirely and consisted of her solo repertoire.

More than half the set consisted of Miyu’s originals, with covers making up the rest. Many were fast songs, keeping the energy high throughout. With “HELLO, TOKYO”, “Baby Paradise” and “Daijobu da yo.”, or “It’s All Right”, the stage and audience seemed to answer one another. Korean covers joined them: “Time of Our Life” and MeloMance’s “Love, Maybe”.

Even at a performance in Japan, she had prepared songs in Korean for the Korean fans. That still surprised me, and made me grateful. Alongside the happiness, I briefly wondered whether Japanese fans might feel a little disappointed. Still, knowing how much thought lay behind that choice made it reach me more deeply.

The set list that day

Miyu’s opening words, spoken in Korean

Before the concert got fully underway, Miyu shared a few words from the stage. She first greeted the audience in Japanese, speaking calmly about how long she had waited for this day and how grateful she was that so many people had come. Then she paused and added that, because fans had also travelled from Korea, she wanted to speak in Korean too.

What followed was much longer than I expected. Rather than a simple greeting along the lines of thanking us for coming, she linked sentences together and tried to express what she felt. I could not call the pronunciation perfect, but the emotion came through clearly enough. Above all, I could feel the sincerity intact.

At last year’s birthday concert, Miyu had barely been able to say anything in Korean. A greeting consisted of a few short words, and almost all her comments were in Japanese. That she could now speak a comparatively long passage herself onstage after only a year left a strong impression. No explanation was needed to feel how much effort she had made with Korean fans in mind.

I think the other Korean fans there, who like me had flown from Korea to watch this show, probably felt something similar. Language carries more power than one expects. Simply trying to convey a feeling in someone’s own language can already be deeply moving. Before the concert had properly begun, I could clearly feel that this stage meant more than a birthday celebration alone.

Korean songs, and a clearer sense of distance and care

As the concert moved into its middle stretch, the atmosphere lifted naturally once more. The air changed subtly when “Time of Our Life” began in particular. Miyu had been covering it regularly at recent shows, yet it reached me differently each time. It was not simply because it was a Korean song. The story within it, the place Miyu now occupied and the circumstances of the fans watching her seemed to overlap in an unusual way.

Long ago, her Korean manager had asked fans which Korean songs they wanted her to cover. I have a faint memory of recommending this one. At the time, looking at its lyrics and mood, I had simply thought it would suit her. When I first saw her actually sing it onstage, the emotion was much stronger than expected. That was true when I first heard it at her Harajuku solo concert in July, and it was true again here.

Miyu is a Japanese singer, and this performance was taking place in Japan, yet her effort to convey the Korean lyrics clearly was striking. Even where it was not perfect, knowing the effort behind it made me listen more closely. During the song, not only the Korean fans but the Japanese fans too were listening quietly. For that moment, it felt as though the feeling arrived before the language.

High-fives, brief but clearly remembered

There were an unusual number of high-fives during this performance. Stage and audience were close, and Miyu frequently came to the edges. Our hands touched only briefly, but as those moments recurred within the flow of the songs, the feeling of experiencing the concert together grew stronger. What remains clearest for me is how often she seemed to begin each round of high-fives with my hand.

It may have been coincidence, or simply a result of her route and my position that day, but that was how it felt in the moment. When she came to the edge and reached out, the first contact seemed to start on my side. That stayed in my mind even after the concert ended. A high-five is a very short moment, and perhaps not an element large enough to determine an entire performance.

Repeated like that, though, it created a definite feeling that we really were sharing this particular moment. The person onstage and the people in the audience were not merely looking at one another; they were inside the same movement. That was probably one reason this performance felt unusually close.

Near the end, Miyu’s tears and the feeling that spread with them

As the show entered its later part, the atmosphere onstage began to change little by little. Unlike the overflowing energy at the beginning, the final stretch seemed to gather its emotions into focus. Then, towards the end, Miyu finally cried while sharing her thoughts. She is not usually someone who makes a great display of personal emotion onstage.

Perhaps that was why the tears felt heavier. Last year’s birthday concert had moving moments too, but the feeling this time had a distinctly different texture. If last year had seemed closer to a performance in which she stood and held on alone, this one felt, from beginning to end, like something made together with the audience. I could clearly sense her taking in the audience’s reactions one by one as she sang, then drawing strength from that energy again.

Perhaps it was within that exchange that the emotion rose naturally. Watching her, I felt my own throat tighten. The concert was so good that I found myself worrying first about what it would feel like when this time came to an end. We also heard comments from the band members that day.

It was memorable to see a musician of Korean heritage living in Japan share a short message in Korean. One particularly entertaining moment came when the members shouted our cheering phrase, “Sekai de ichiban”—“the best in the world”—at the end. I had never imagined that a chant begun at last year’s Ewha Womans University show would reach this far. Hearing words sent from the audience return to us from the stage suddenly brought all that accumulated time very close.

An unexpected farewell, short but lasting

An unexpected moment followed the concert. Near the exit, Miyu was greeting fans individually as they left. Hurrying out would not have changed anything in particular, so I moved slowly and stayed as far back as I could. I was worried that she might not have seen the extra-large banner properly during the show.

Going out at the end, I unfolded it once more. Miyu seemed to repeat “machigaeta”, meaning that she had made a mistake or misunderstood something. I did not quite grasp it at the time. Smiling, I wished her a happy birthday in Japanese, told her I was always cheering for her and went outside.

After waiting outside briefly, I learned what she had meant from another Korean fan. Apparently she had momentarily mixed up the name on the banner and was apologising for it. Knowing that made the brief exchange remain more clearly in my memory. My Japanese was still imperfect and I had missed the moment, but even that now feels like part of the memory.

The conversations that continued outside

After brief goodbyes with the Japanese fans outside the venue, the reality of a weekday evening began to disperse everyone. Those who had work the following day left relatively quickly, until naturally only the Korean fans remained. As we talked a little longer, the accordion player from the band came out in front of the venue. Spotting him, everyone naturally asked for a photograph, and we were able to take a group picture. Perhaps because the concert’s afterglow had not yet faded, that single photograph seemed to hold the air of the day itself.

Deciding not to wait for her departure, and what I heard later

After the show I briefly wondered whether to wait and say goodbye as Miyu left, as we had after last year’s birthday concert, or to move on straight away. Last year, I had heard afterwards that our waiting outside had made it difficult for her to leave promptly. I had also been told that waiting to greet artists on their way out was not customary in Japan, so this time I chose to clear the space first rather than make her uncomfortable.

A similar situation had happened at the Harajuku performance; I remembered staff coming out themselves to ask us to move. With those experiences in mind, I judged that it would be better not to wait unnecessarily this time. Later, however, I heard a slightly different story through her Korean manager.

Apparently Miyu had been a little disappointed not to see us there. I still do not know which choice was right. If something similar happens again, though, I think it might be all right to wait and say goodbye before leaving, so long as it does not make her uncomfortable. If it genuinely became a problem, the staff would presumably organise things then.

Leaving the concert for the streets of Shibuya

The moment I left the venue, the sound and heat that had filled the room seemed to drain away at once. Music and cheers that had been all around me only a moment earlier receded sharply as I crossed the doorway, replaced by Shibuya’s night air. My mind knew the concert had ended, but my body had not entirely left its afterglow.

Echoes of songs remained in my ears, and images of the stage overlapped with what I saw. Walking through Shibuya like that made the city’s particular speed feel clearer. Even at the hour the show had finished, its night showed no sign of slowing. People hurried towards their own destinations, while neon signs and giant screens lit the streets in colours sharper than those of daylight.

I had visited Shibuya often enough that it was no longer unfamiliar, but night gives it a different face each time. That is especially true immediately after a concert. People who had shared the same music and feelings in one room scatter back into their lives, and we become part of the enormous city again. The streets were especially crowded that evening.

Travellers and local residents, office workers heading home and young people out with friends mingled so densely that it hardly seemed a weekday night. Shibuya is always noisy after dark, yet sometimes in that noise I feel I am spending a moment alone. Perhaps because the concert still lingered, quieter emotions felt stronger even among so many people.

The crossing, clearer after dark

As I walked, the crossing that symbolises Shibuya naturally came into view. At night its significance becomes more distinct. Watching people pour out from every direction when the signal changes always stirs a curious feeling. They are all heading towards entirely different places, yet for a short moment they share this one space. That makes it one of the scenes that best expresses Shibuya to me. I did not manage to photograph it that day, but perhaps for that reason I looked at it longer. The crossing at night, watched without raising a camera, remained clearer in my memory.

Towards the next stop, carrying the show with me

The sadness that the concert was over stayed with me as I walked. Wanting to see a little more alternated with the feeling that, even so, it had been a wonderful evening. Such emotions seem clearest when I walk through a city immediately after a performance. We Korean fans decided to eat together and naturally turned towards Shibuya Yokocho.

There were seven of us, and finding a restaurant that could take a group at that hour was not easy. Yokocho was a practical choice in that respect as well: several eateries gathered in one place, with a relatively flexible arrangement for seating. Above all, the place had also appeared in the new version of Miyu’s “HELLO TOKYO” music video, which gave it another, more personal meaning for me.

I did not want to go straight back to the accommodation when the concert ended. I wanted to sit, even briefly, with the fans who had made the trip and talk about the stage we had just watched. I was curious about how each person had experienced the same show. As long as I listened to their accounts, it felt as though the performance could continue a little longer.

That night was no different. Still carrying the room’s heat and the concert’s afterglow, we naturally thought about somewhere we could go as a group. With seven of us, the options were fewer than expected, and Shibuya Yokocho was the first place that came to mind. I had been several times already, which made it a choice less likely to disappoint.

The familiarity of returning

This was certainly not my first visit to Shibuya Yokocho. Travelling back and forth to Japan to follow Miyu had gradually turned it from a new destination into somewhere I returned to. I had already been twice that year, once in February and again in March. The February visit in particular had become a striking memory in retrospect.

At the time, we had simply drifted here after a concert while looking for somewhere the fans could eat. It was chosen without a plan or any special significance. Later, when I learned that it appeared as a setting in the new version of Miyu’s “HELLO TOKYO” music video, the memory took on an entirely different colour.

Without realising it, we had made a remarkably lucky choice. It is not often that somewhere one sits and eats without a second thought later reappears in an official music video. Perhaps that is why Shibuya Yokocho has remained more than a food alley to me. Its meaning arrived later, layered over an earlier visit.

Why this return felt different

Coming here again immediately after Miyu’s concert, with fellow fans, gave the visit its own significance. It felt less like moving somewhere simply to fill our stomachs and more like a continuation of people gathering after sharing the same stage and feelings. The show still lingered strongly on everyone’s face.

No one was particularly loud, but emotion sat inside each remark. Even a short question about how good the concert had been carried the depth of what each person had felt. We could not have this conversation inside the venue, and it would be difficult to continue alone back in our rooms.

That is what makes such a gathering precious. One strength of Shibuya Yokocho is how well it fits this kind of moment. It is noisy without being wholly distracting, crowded without making one feel cut off. Different conversations run at each table, but their currents are held together by a single atmosphere.

Conversation finding its own language and pace

Once seated, everyone began unpacking the concert in the words that came most comfortably. We had heard the same songs in the same space, yet the moments that stayed with us differed a little. Listening to others brought back scenes I had not fully noticed.

Sitting together let us share the afterglow more slowly than if I had returned to my room alone. Each time I experience this, I feel how strong a connection one shared performance can become. Nationality, language and everyday circumstances may differ, but having watched the same stage and heard the same songs can be enough to bring people to one table.

In the end, that evening’s meal was not simply time spent satisfying hunger. It was a way of gradually accepting that the performance had ended and putting our own feelings in order. Miyu was no longer onstage, but what she had left with us could linger a little longer on this table.

After the concert and a meal together, the day naturally begins to feel complete. Yet once I actually start back towards the accommodation, the feeling that I do not want it to end rises again. With the performance still in my body and songs and scenes circling my head, going straight to bed feels like too much to give up. Perhaps that was why we naturally stopped at a convenience store before returning that night.

Three of us were sharing the accommodation, which made the idea of continuing the concert conversation over late-night snacks more inviting. There was another convenience store closer to the room, but on the first day I did not yet know the route properly. We headed for the FamilyMart I could immediately see outside Nippori Station. It meant walking a little farther in the end, though even that short extra distance did not feel particularly tiring that night.

On a trip to Japan, a convenience store becomes more than somewhere to buy necessities. Especially after a long day, it serves as a buffer in which the last feelings can settle. People returning on the final trains, neighbourhood residents quietly choosing drinks, travellers like us carrying the afterglow of a concert rather than suitcases: the store at this hour holds an unusual mix of moods.

Inside FamilyMart, we moved naturally between the drinks and snacks. Having already eaten dinner, we were less hungry than in the mood to chew something while we talked. Rather than beer or soft drinks, we chose lighter drinks such as tea or water, then looked for simple snacks to go with them.

An unfamiliar snack, chosen with a little courage

The most memorable choice was the unusual snack I photographed. Looking at the packet, I could not immediately tell exactly what it was. Its appearance suggested small dried octopus or squid, with the shape of the legs still intact, which put me off a little at first. I do not clearly remember the exact product name or kind.

What stayed with me was the unfamiliar appearance of what seemed to be a dried seafood snack. When I first picked it up, I thought more about how it looked than how it might taste. It was different from the snacks I usually knew, so I hesitated briefly, but that night I wanted to try at least one new thing.

Once I tasted it, the flavour suited me far better than expected. The unusual appearance had made me nervous, but a first bite showed it was not as tough as I had imagined. The more I chewed, the more the characteristic savouriness of seafood slowly emerged. I could immediately understand why something like this was often chosen to accompany a drink. More than anything, it had exactly the right pace for slowly chewing while talking.

The night’s rhythm, continuing towards our room

With snacks and drinks chosen, we took the bag and headed back to the accommodation. The way was not entirely familiar on our first day, but the quiet lanes around Nippori Station made the walk itself feel easy. If anything, the excitement immediately after the show was slowly settling, and I felt the day drawing into order.

Back at the room, we washed, sat around the table together and took out what we had bought. It was less a substantial late-night meal than one last way of holding on to the concert. Without anyone needing to make a grand announcement, conversation naturally returned to the scenes and songs that had left the strongest impression.

The neighbourhood opens quietly the next morning

Our first night had continued fairly late in the afterglow of the show. That did not mean the second morning began with sleeping in. I opened my eyes before the previous evening’s excitement had entirely faded, and the sunlight through the window seemed unusually distinct.

Seeing it between the curtains, I immediately thought that the weather would be beautiful. Mornings in Nippori are always quiet. Unlike Shibuya or Shinjuku, it is not a neighbourhood already bustling from the start; the day seems to open slowly. In the short walk from the accommodation towards the station, I felt again why I liked it here.

Nippori’s streets are far from glamorous. Instead, the traces of living remain naturally visible: old houses, low buildings, bicycles standing in the lanes. Without any special staging, these scenes are quite enough to show everyday Tokyo. Perhaps because it was morning, people who seemed to be commuting, residents taking walks and those heading to convenience stores passed calmly back and forth. Another feature of Nippori is how much more visible the movements of longtime residents are than those of tourists. Thanks to that, I can feel calmer here simply by walking, without even raising a camera.

The warmth clear weather adds to a view

The weather that morning was particularly memorable: a cloudless blue sky, sunlight that was not too strong and cool air. Although the previous night’s tiredness remained, breathing it in made my body feel lighter. It was not so much that the air itself was distinctly different from Seoul’s as that the neighbourhood moved to another rhythm. Nippori did not seem to hurry its morning, and that ease reached a traveller’s mind too. It let me begin the second day with a walk rather than with the feeling of an itinerary.

Nippori’s time, running beside the railway

It is impossible to talk about Nippori without its railway views. Walking near the station, several branching tracks naturally enter one’s field of vision: the sound of passing trains, carriages moving along the rails and bridges crossing above them. Standing for a moment looking down, I could feel how many people this city carries. At the same time, it was interesting that amid all those journeys the neighbourhood kept its own speed. In contrast to trains moving busily to and fro, the residential streets around them remained still. That contrast seemed the greatest charm of Nippori’s morning scenery.

When the first day’s photographs came alive again

I had actually noticed these views the day before. Pressed by travel and plans on that first day, however, I had only taken photographs and passed on, without time to look properly. Only on the second morning did the scenes in those pictures naturally overlap with the landscape in front of me. Tracks, lanes and buildings I had merely preserved in photographs now had memory and feeling laid over them as well. Perhaps that was why the same places gave such a different impression. I think this is part of the power of the next morning on a journey.

Ochanomizu has remained in my mind as somewhere I often passed through without meaning to. On my Tokyo trip in 2019, its same-level transfer arrangement naturally brought it into my route, and I went through the station repeatedly. It was more a point along the way than a destination, yet it stayed strangely clear in memory. Returning this time, I found Ochanomizu in the same place, with the same river and tracks, but its atmosphere had changed markedly. Before, my strongest impression had been of a station openly showing its age. After renovation, it now presented a much more ordered and polished face.

An old station, brought into order

The Ochanomizu Station I saw in 2019 had felt primarily functional. Getting around was not inconvenient, but old was the impression that came before handsome. On this return, the routes through the building were much clearer, and platforms and passages had become brighter.

What struck me was not a sense of excessive newness, but a modern touch added while preserving the existing structure and atmosphere. It looked more like an old city being put in order with respect for time than being remade for the sake of novelty. The result seemed approachable both for first-time visitors and for people who had known it before.

A street of instrument shops, worth walking slowly

Another reason Ochanomizu feels special is its musical instrument shops. Around the station, specialists in guitars, basses, drums and wind instruments follow naturally one after another. Even for someone who does not make music professionally, this is a street that invites slow walking and glances through the windows. My schedule did not leave time to explore each shop on this visit, but I wanted to set aside time to go around them one by one when I returned. Even without buying an instrument, the atmosphere they created and the time accumulated in those spaces seemed enough to make it a worthwhile experience.

A September memory, and a connection returning

Walking through Ochanomizu brought to mind a Japanese acquaintance I had met on my trip in late September. On that journey, mostly around Saitama, he had driven to Haneda Airport to meet me and helped me get around; the next day we had travelled through central Tokyo together on public transport. In the course of talking, I learned that he had graduated from Meiji University. At the time, it was simply something I heard and let pass.

Now, walking more slowly through this area, the conversation suddenly returned, and I naturally noticed that Meiji’s campus was right here near Ochanomizu. Its buildings sat comfortably within the neighbourhood, carrying a solid presence without the clamour of a tourist attraction. Thinking of it not merely as a building, but as a place where someone’s time and effort had gathered, deepened my impression of the street.

In 2019 it had been somewhere I simply passed through; in September it had been on the way to a destination. This time it became a neighbourhood I walked because I wanted to see it again. The way a part of a city slowly changes its relationship with me and finds a place in memory is another pleasure of travelling.

A place whose atmosphere reaches me without the anime

Walking around Kanda, I stopped before a flight of stone steps. They were called Onnazaka, a name that literally means women’s slope. The steps and surrounding lanes drew my eye before any grand tourist facility or elaborate decoration. I had come that day to look at this ordinary-seeming street as the background to a story. I had not yet properly watched the Chainsaw Man anime, but thought visiting a place associated with its scenery could still mean something.

Since I had not encountered the work first, perhaps the place would reach me before the fictional scene did. I was curious about experiencing it in that order. I was travelling with an acquaintance who had already watched Chainsaw Man, so I could look around while listening to explanations. Hearing which scene it appeared in and why the stairs meant something to fans made them feel like more than a location: somewhere memories had gathered.

I had not yet fully seen the work, including the Reze arc, and meeting this place first as a physical space was what stayed with me. I wondered whether, once I had watched it all and recalled these stairs, I might revisit the scene with an entirely different feeling. My companion explained that the steps were connected to the Reze arc of Chainsaw Man. Listening to what the relationship between Denji and Reze left with viewers, I tried to lay a scene I had not properly seen over the steps before me.

It was the reverse of the order taken by someone who knew the work and came looking for it. I could not yet fully gauge what the scene meant. But looking at the steps again after the explanation, I could see how, for someone else, they might be more than a structure for climbing up and down a street. When I remembered this place after watching the whole story, another feeling might come with it.

The curious atmosphere of the name Onnazaka

Thinking about the name Onnazaka, I climbed slowly. Rather than concentrating on the distinction contained in the name, I paid attention first to my own steps and the scenery around me. There was no reason to hurry past, so I noticed the walls beside the stairs and the quiet atmosphere of the residential streets. Step by step, I slowed and looked around more often. Perhaps that was why the place seemed both a contrast to the intensity of Chainsaw Man and, oddly, a good match for it.

Flowers on the steps, and the memories of fans

Flowers placed beside the steps changed the place at once from a present-day view into somewhere that held memory. I had not personally heard who left them or what they intended. After listening to the story, however, the small flowers felt like a trace of someone’s care for this place. I looked again at those marks, which had caught my attention before any signboard.

Even without having finished the anime, I could feel that I was visiting somewhere precious to someone. Perhaps because I arrived without that knowledge, I could see it as a point where two Tokyos overlapped: the landscape before the story, and the landscape after it. Stone steps, an old wall, the quiet air of a residential area, with a light layer of contemporary storytelling laid over them. They all coexisted without overwhelming one another.

I had not yet watched all of Chainsaw Man, but that did not mean I could simply walk past this place. Walking around Kanda, I found that spots visited by anime fans slipped into our route more often than I had expected, and this payphone was one of them. What stayed with me was that I had come without knowing the scene in detail: before it could be a pilgrimage stop, it reached me as an ordinary fragment of everyday Tokyo.

A payphone seen through the memory of a scene

I knew that Chainsaw Man fans came to this payphone because it resembled a setting in the Reze Arc. I had heard that people took photographs here while thinking about Reze and Denji, but, having not finished the story, I could not quite share the feelings attached to that scene. For fans who remembered the arc, even a single payphone could become a special place. I did not yet have those scenes and emotions stored up inside me, so I looked at it instead with the thought that an unremarkable street corner could give someone a reason to make a journey.

When we arrived, though, there was an unexpected obstacle. A truck was parked immediately behind the phone. It intruded into the frame and made a photograph difficult to compose, so in the end we had to wait quite a while for it to leave. Looking back, even that wait has stayed with me in a peculiar way. It was a small reminder that visiting the real settings of a story does not always mean encountering a scene arranged neatly for you.

Something extraordinary in the middle of an ordinary street

Only once the truck had gone could I see the whole payphone properly. It had no special decoration, no sign announcing a tourist attraction; it was a completely ordinary public telephone. Yet that was precisely what seemed to suit the atmosphere of Chainsaw Man. Such an extraordinary story resting on such an everyday place.

The phone felt less like a mere backdrop than a point through which the mood of the work could enter the real world. I had still not watched all of the anime, but I thought that, when I eventually did, this phone would come back to me. Perhaps I would recognize the scene then, and only afterwards would the feelings of the story settle over the place I already remembered.

It occurred to me that a visit like this need not become meaningful only after you have finished a story. Remembering the space first, then letting the story fill it later, seemed a perfectly good way of doing things too.

Travelling around Tokyo, I often find myself wondering between stops what would feel right to eat at that particular moment. On days with a lot of moving around, whether for a concert or an anime-location walk, I want something memorable without it sitting too heavily. That day, in the Kanda and Jimbocho area, the answer was Japanese cold noodles. I had vaguely heard that they were quite different from the naengmyeon I knew in Korea, but this was my first time actually trying them.

A modest little restaurant down a Jimbocho lane

Kanda-Jimbocho is full of secondhand bookshops and small restaurants, and turning into a single side street can change the whole atmosphere. Kure Reimen Gomon was not a noisy shop on a main road. It was the sort of place I could imagine local people slipping into for lunch. It looked small from outside, and, once inside, I felt that roughly ten to fifteen people would fill the counter and few tables.

A restaurant of that size can put me at ease. The short menu gave the impression of a place that had spent a long time concentrating on one thing. Its main dish was Kure reimen, cold noodles from Kure in Hiroshima Prefecture. I was curious to discover how they differed from the cold noodles I regularly ate at home.

I ordered the basic bowl of Kure reimen. It cost 1,300 yen. Thinking of an ordinary Japanese lunch, I could not call it particularly cheap, but neither did it feel like a tourist mark-up; the ingredients and the finished dish made the price seem reasonable. When it arrived, the first things I noticed were the clear broth and the toppings laid neatly across it.

There were thin slices of chashu, Japanese braised pork, shredded cucumber, a halved boiled egg and seafood over the noodles. The broth was not icy or intensely cold in the way Korean naengmyeon can be. It was cool at a gentler temperature. That made it easy to enjoy even in November; in fact, on a day that felt slightly warm, it was exactly the sort of meal I wanted.

The texture and flavour of Japanese cold noodles

With the first mouthful, I thought that comparing this directly with Korean naengmyeon was probably the wrong starting point. The two might look similar, but the approach was different. The broth was mild, with neither saltiness nor acidity pushing to the front. Instead, it seemed designed to let each ingredient speak clearly. The crunch of the cucumber, the gentle flavour of the chashu and the springiness of the noodles fitted together without getting in one another's way.

Rather than the pronounced buckwheat aroma I associated with Korean cold noodles, these noodles were about a smooth, soft texture. I could eat comfortably from start to finish, and it was the sort of bowl that left me finishing the broth as well. Kure reimen felt less like a fiercely cold dish than a way of easing the heat out of my body. I could see it working not only in midsummer but through late autumn, almost up to the edge of winter.

Looking around, I had the impression that plenty of people ordered it without much concern for the season. We were there at lunchtime, and the seats filled naturally with a varied mix: people eating quietly alone and others who looked as though they worked nearby.

The reassurance of a small restaurant

The interior was unshowy. Posters related to the region hung on the walls, and the kitchen was clearly visible beyond the counter. Seeing the food being prepared without having to make an effort gave me an easy sense of trust. The atmosphere would have suited a solo traveller or two people having a quiet meal, and I noticed that there seemed to be more neighbourhood customers than tourists.

Finding a place like this by chance can make a trip feel that little bit richer. Between the Chainsaw Man locations and our walk around Kanda, we had already covered a lot of ground that day. I needed a meal that was light but properly satisfying, and Kure Reimen Gomon did exactly that. What stayed with me was less the fact that I had eaten cold noodles in Japan than the feeling of having eaten a meal that belonged to the rhythm of that neighbourhood.

Walking around Kanda, I often came across shops with an atmosphere far removed from bright signs and big chains. An old signboard, a dim entrance, an interior that was not easy to read from the street. Kissa L was one of them; kissa means a traditional coffee shop.

On first seeing it, the place felt so quiet and weighty that I briefly wondered whether people really came here. It was known among Chainsaw Man fans as a place to visit, but I had not explored the work deeply. Rather than immediately seeing a setting from a story, I first took it in as a coffee shop that had stood somewhere in the lanes of Kanda for a long time.

Why Chainsaw Man fans came here

Among Chainsaw Man fans, Kissa L was a place people visited with the story's coffee shop in mind. Since I did not know the work well, I looked at the exterior and the surrounding lane while thinking about what brought those fans here, rather than claiming to know exactly which scene it had inspired. What interested me was how different it looked from the usual image of a café. The name said kissa, a coffee shop, but peering inside gave me more the impression of a restaurant.

The arrangement of the tables, the layout and even the low light suggested a place for eating quietly or staying a while alone, rather than dropping in for a quick, casual coffee. To be honest, I did not go in and spend time there. The thought of trying it did cross my mind, but by the time I opened the door and took a brief look inside, I had more or less made up my mind. It was darker than I had expected, and the small windows meant that even in daylight the interior felt distinctly dim.

More than anything, we had already eaten earlier in the day, so I never quite reached the point of wanting to settle down at another table. It remained a place where I had seen a spot visited by Chainsaw Man fans for myself, caught its atmosphere and moved on. Someone drawn to that mood might have loved it, but, given our plans and how I felt that day, I did not want to force myself inside. Simply recognizing the place seemed enough; I did not need to enter just because it was on an anime pilgrimage route.

When looking is enough

One thing this trip taught me was that visiting a story's real-world settings did not have to include an experience inside every building to mean something. At some places, going in and sitting down matters; at others, seeing the exterior, sensing the atmosphere and understanding the surroundings can be enough. Kissa L stayed with me through its façade and its setting alone.

Looking at the sign, the position of the lane and the neighbouring streets, I could begin to understand why fans thought of the work here. Before anything polished or perfectly arranged, I saw a real Tokyo coffee shop where people came and went. Kanda itself was less a great tourist attraction than a district with the texture of daily life still visible: secondhand bookshops, old restaurants, small offices and schools mixed together.

In the middle of it, Kissa L seemed to reflect something of the neighbourhood's character. It was not a shop actively pulling tourists in, but neither did it feel entirely closed to the outside. It had simply been there a long time, and it gave the impression that it might carry on much as it was. That made it interesting even without knowing Chainsaw Man.

Visiting before knowing the whole story

In a way, this Chainsaw Man walk was especially memorable because I undertook it without knowing the work deeply. Instead of laying my feelings about particular scenes over the streets, I encountered the places themselves first. With Kissa L too, the fact that a space like this existed and continued its ordinary daily life reached me more strongly than a note about which scene it resembled.

Whether someone had yet to watch Chainsaw Man properly or had already watched it all, the shop could mean something different to each visitor. For one person it was the setting of a scene; for another, simply a quiet coffee shop in Kanda. On this trip, the two meanings did not need to coincide for the place to leave an impression.

Walking in the middle of Tokyo, it can seem a little surprising that there is still a district centred on books. It is neither a glittering shopping area nor a themed street aimed at tourists. Kanda-Jimbocho is an unassuming neighbourhood that grew naturally around antiquarian and secondhand bookshops. It was a place that stirred more feeling in me on returning than it had on my first visit.

Walking Jimbocho again, over the memory of 2019

I had visited Kanda-Jimbocho in 2019, during my first few trips to Tokyo. Even then, the discovery that Tokyo had a neighbourhood like this left a strong impression. I remembered spending a fair amount of time exploring rather than simply passing through. I had gone into shops such as Bumpodo to look at books, then followed the lanes from one shop to another, comparing their individual atmospheres and interests.

I could not say I had stayed for an enormous part of the trip, but it was certainly not a place I had skimmed over lightly. Coming back this time, my first thought was how much of its overall feeling had remained despite the passing years. The pattern of the streets and the air created by all those bookshops did not seem very different. Rather than having become something new, the neighbourhood felt as though it was still holding its place.

What struck me, though, was that the places I had remembered most vividly did not all come into view at once. In 2019 I had gone into Bumpodo and several other shops and looked around in some detail. Perhaps our route was different this time, or perhaps I was taking in the district more broadly, but I did not encounter them with the same clarity.

I had also hoped to return to a café I remembered from that earlier visit, but I could not pin down its exact location, so I never reached it. I did not find out whether it was still there in the same form. There was clearly a distance in time between the Jimbocho stored in my memory and the one beneath my feet. Even so, walking the streets again left me certain of one thing.

Jimbocho did not feel like a neighbourhood that had changed beyond recognition; it felt like a neighbourhood on which time had settled over my memories. It was far from what people usually imagine as a tourist attraction. There was no huge shopping mall or defining landmark, no space deliberately arranged for photographs.

Instead, there were rows of little bookshops with old signs, each showing the traces of a subject it had stubbornly made its own. Literature, philosophy, social science, art, design, manga and foreign-language books: the specialisms were clear. One shop might handle only modern Japanese literature, another books on film and theatre. Though they looked similar from outside, opening their doors could reveal entirely different worlds.

In that sense, Jimbocho felt closer to the daily territory of students, researchers and local book lovers than to a district built around visitors.

The antiquarian bookshops south of Jimbocho Station

The concentration of old bookshops at the heart of Kanda-Jimbocho lay south of Jimbocho Station. Shops spread out from the main road into the side streets, and a few steps could bring a different atmosphere. Some sold affordably priced secondhand books in the familiar way; others specialized in rare out-of-print editions, first editions or much older volumes.

Their shelves were packed like miniature libraries, and a glance at the price labels sometimes made me pause. But the value of being here did not rest entirely on buying something. Looking along each shelf and imagining the time a book had already spent in other people's hands was itself a reason to walk through Jimbocho.

There were historical reasons for this becoming a book district too. After the Meiji Restoration, institutions including predecessors of the University of Tokyo, law schools and other centres of education gathered in the area. Bookshops serving their students and teachers followed. I had read that buying and selling used books became established among students with limited money, and that the continuing trade helped form Jimbocho's distinctive antiquarian culture. Perhaps that was why the streets seemed to hold traces of accumulated knowledge and time, beyond their straightforward role as places where books were sold.

What returning let me see

Walking Jimbocho again, I felt that it was much more than a district with lots of old books. In a rapidly changing Tokyo, it struck me as one of the few places that retained a particular, steady texture. Walking slowly, looking at signs and watching the book spines through the glass was enough to make being there worthwhile. Perhaps that was why I thought this return visit would stay with me even longer than the one in 2019.

We had been on our feet a surprising amount since that morning. Passing through Ochanomizu, walking slowly around Kanda and looking along Jimbocho's book streets had carried us farther than I had expected. We were moving less towards a fixed destination than following the neighbourhood one place at a time, which somehow made the tiredness more noticeable.

Before long, I naturally began to want a seat and a short rest. Moments like that matter when travelling. Pushing on too far can unsettle the rest of a day; taking a break at the right time makes everything that follows easier. The first place that came to mind for finding that balance was, inevitably, Starbucks.

There on the map, nowhere in front of us

Opening the map on my phone, I found a Starbucks marked near Jimbocho Station. Its name was Starbucks Coffee Toei Jimbocho Station. Judging by the location, it did not look far from where we stood. The problem was that 'nearby' proved a more complicated idea than expected.

We followed the map around the station several times without easily spotting that familiar sign. Searching under the assumption that it was a street-level shop only made us feel that we kept missing it. After wandering for a while, I finally understood.

This was not an ordinary roadside branch. It was inside Toei's Jimbocho subway station, beyond the ticket gates and near the platforms. In other words, we would not see it unless we went into the paid part of the station. In the end, we went through the gates to check.

I tapped my Suica transit card and entered, and only then did we find the Starbucks in front of the platform area. There it was at last; I could not help a slightly deflated laugh. But another problem awaited us. Looking inside, we found no seats left for us to rest in.

The morning commute had already passed, yet the little station branch was almost full of people having a quick coffee while waiting. I briefly considered standing with a takeaway, but what we wanted was a break. Drinking coffee on our feet was some distance from that purpose. We decided to give up the idea of spending time there.

A small complication on the way back through the gates

The difficulty was that we had already entered the station. If we left through the same station without boarding a train, I was not sure what would happen to the entry recorded on my Suica or to the fare. Worried that we had created an awkward situation for ourselves, I went to find a member of staff beside the gates. At the small booth, I explained what had happened, and the staff member understood straight away and helped us. I said that we had come in looking for Starbucks, had not used it and wanted to leave again.

After they dealt with the entry, we were able to exit without an additional charge. That was how it was resolved for us that day: by explaining directly and receiving help. At least the matter did not hold us up for long. We had come downstairs looking for a seat and were leaving without even a coffee, but I was relieved that someone readily helped once we explained.

So we emerged onto the street again without drinking a single coffee at the Starbucks inside Jimbocho Station. I definitely wanted a rest by then, but there was little reason to stay where we were. Our next choice was the area around Tokyo Dome. I knew there was a Starbucks over there too, and, more than anything, Jimbocho to Tokyo Dome was a reasonable distance for a walk.

The idea of going just a little farther came naturally, and off we went again. In retrospect, I remember this episode less for the disappointment of missing a coffee than for the way it made me experience Tokyo's arrangement of space through my own feet. A place that looks simple on a map can actually be a complicated layering of street and underground, inside and outside the gates. That small episode showed me exactly that.

After spending a long time searching for Starbucks inside Jimbocho Station, we had ended up outside again without a proper rest. I did want a coffee, but stronger than that was the feeling that, since things had worked out this way, we might as well walk a little farther. Tokyo Dome was comfortably within walking distance of Jimbocho and did not take us far out of our way. More importantly, it was a place where several meanings overlapped on this trip.

Despite all my journeys to and from Tokyo, I had strangely never stopped there properly. Other plans always pushed it aside, or I was travelling in another direction and missed the chance. This time I was not going because there was something particular I had to do. It was more a feeling that this would be a good moment to see it.

A sentence on a signed ball, and Tokyo Dome

One reason for heading towards Tokyo Dome was that I kept thinking about the ball signed by Miyu that I had finally received at the previous day's concert. On it was a message about wanting to sing in a dome-sized venue one day. When I first read it, places such as the Nippon Budokan naturally came to mind. Through her activities with SIS/T, she had already stood on the Budokan stage.

Even so, Tokyo Dome was hardly an unrelated thought. Perhaps nowhere expressed the symbolism of the word 'dome' more directly. I went with the modest idea of seeing Tokyo Dome for myself, even if I was not attending a performance. It was not about assigning a grand meaning to the visit.

I wanted to walk there once, sit down once and catch my breath. The place that gave us that rest was Starbucks Tokyo Dome City Meets Port. As if making up for our disappointment at Jimbocho Station, this branch had a little more room to breathe. What I liked most was the outdoor seating.

Tokyo in November was pleasantly cool in a way I had not quite expected. In daylight, the sun had a gentle warmth, and in the shade the breeze brushed past comfortably. In weather like that, sitting outside felt much more fitting than going indoors into air conditioning. We naturally settled at an outdoor table and ordered coffee.

Perhaps because we had walked so much, I felt the tension leave my body as soon as I sat down. A sip of coffee, then a little time looking around without speaking. These almost empty intervals during a trip can stay in the memory longest. The movement of the day paused here, and my thoughts seemed to find some order alongside it.

A place that brought 'one day' to mind

Tokyo Dome itself invited me to imagine a future. At that moment I was simply a traveller taking a coffee break, but only a day earlier I had been watching Miyu sing in a small venue from the closest of positions. And there was that word, 'dome', on the ball. Sitting here, it felt less like a vague dream than a small glimpse of a scene far ahead.

It did not have to be this particular Tokyo Dome, but the place had a way of making me picture her singing on a bigger stage in a larger space someday. Once I had rested enough, I felt ready to walk again. Our route from Jimbocho had led to Tokyo Dome, and being able to catch our breath at its end gave that route meaning enough. Travel, I thought, was made of one flow like this after another.

The reason for visiting Tokyo Dome was simple. I had the ball signed by Kano Miyu that I had finally received at the previous day's concert, and one sentence on it would not leave my mind: she wanted to sing in a dome-sized venue one day. Thinking of those words again, I wanted to walk around Tokyo Dome for myself, even without a concert to attend.

So we headed over without a special timetable. Honestly, I first imagined a dome standing on its own, with the baseball stadiums I knew in Korea naturally shaping the picture. Arriving showed me how wrong that image was. This felt less like a ballpark than a whole pocket of everyday life within the city.

The surroundings, and one photograph

The first thing I did on reaching the square in front of the dome was take out the signed ball. I wanted at least one photograph to remember being there. It needed no elaborate staging. With the dome behind it, I carefully lifted the ball in my hand and pressed the shutter.

The picture was less a record to show other people than a quiet confirmation for myself: I had come this far; I had actually stood in this space. What I felt was closer to calm than excitement. Rather than celebrating a possible future ahead of time, it was as though I was checking the place where that possibility might eventually stand.

As I walked around the dome, what impressed me most was that this was clearly not somewhere that only came alive on game days. Rides were running, cafés and restaurants had a fair number of customers despite it being a weekday afternoon, and shops and walking paths joined together naturally. All of it worked within the single setting of Tokyo Dome City.

Even without a baseball game or a concert on the schedule, the place was already running perfectly well. It was a destination in its own right. Perhaps that was why people did not look hurried. I saw fewer faces set on ticking off sights and more people simply passing through the space as part of their day.

A view that made me think of Jamsil

I naturally thought of Jamsil in Korea. It was not a dome at the time of this trip, but it had long been central to Korean baseball. Where Jamsil felt centred on the game, Tokyo Dome City struck me as everyday entertainment that included a game among many other things. There was a clear difference in how the baseball infrastructure extended beyond a sports facility and became part of ordinary life.

The faintness of the boundary between days with baseball and days without it, and the ease of spending time nearby, seemed to show how long Japan's baseball culture had been accumulating. Walking a circuit of Tokyo Dome City, I thought about the absence of a concert, of cheering, of applause at that moment. Perhaps their absence was what let the place reach me more clearly. Seeing the dome on an empty day turned out to mean more than I had expected.

Without letting an imagined future grow too large, I could first look at the real place where such a stage might stand. It was a quiet visit: a few photographs, a walk, a brief pause. Yet that quietness may be why Tokyo Dome will remain in my memory for so long. The photograph I took holding the signed ball would be something to bring out and look at again one day.

A small city, rather than only a stadium

This was not simply a stadium but a small city built around one. Within it, sport and performance, daily life and rest mingled naturally. If I came back someday, I might have an entirely different reason. For this visit, though, being able to walk around Tokyo Dome on a day with nothing particular happening was enough.

On arriving at Tokyo Dome, what caught my eye first was not so much the stadium itself as the varied commercial spaces around it. Cafés, restaurants, rides and several kinds of merchandise shops. Among them, the place my feet most naturally carried me was the official team shop, almost an emblem of a baseball ground in itself. I was no devoted Yomiuri Giants supporter, but an official shop for the team that called Tokyo Dome home carried too much of the place's symbolism to walk past without looking.

It was somewhere I could imagine entering even without being a fan. Whether it was the pull of Tokyo Dome or the weight of a club with a long history and tradition, my steps slowed a little in front of the shop. It felt less like an ordinary retail space than a place holding the team's accumulated years and stories in concentrated form.

A space built around the jersey

Inside, the jerseys filling the walls were the first things I noticed. Rather than a shop giving equal weight to every kind of merchandise, it felt strongly focused on that one item. Home jerseys with players' names and large numbers stood at regular intervals, while neatly folded stock was stacked below them by size. The display itself impressed me.

It was orderly enough to feel almost like an exhibition, rather than merely goods put out to sell, and the lighting seemed arranged to show the colours and details of the jerseys clearly. It was as though the room were quietly explaining what this team's uniform looked like. I found it interesting that even someone outside the fan base could absorb something of baseball's culture through such an arrangement.

Looking along the jerseys, I noticed familiar names as well as names I did not know. I did not follow Japanese professional baseball consistently, but a player I had heard of once or twice was still enough to make me stop. Even without supporting a particular player, a jersey carrying a name and number felt like a story in itself.

I also found myself imagining how special a place like this must be for the supporters. Seeing, touching and choosing the jersey of the player you followed would mean more than a straightforward purchase. Here, baseball appeared naturally as a culture that continued into everyday life, rather than ending when the spectator left a game.

Why it was worth looking without being a fan

I liked the shop because there was plenty to see even if you were not a Giants fan. Beyond the jerseys were caps, towels, small soft toys and souvenirs, yet the overall presentation stayed restrained and orderly. It felt more like a place I had entered to see and experience than one I had entered because I ought to buy something.

There were also quite a few visitors who looked like tourists from abroad. They seemed less concerned with knowing particular players than with taking home something of the symbolism of the Giants at Tokyo Dome. In that sense, the shop seemed to function as part of Tokyo Dome itself, reaching beyond the team's own supporters.

Looking around the merchandise naturally brought me back to how thoroughly Japanese baseball seemed woven into everyday life. Tokyo Dome was not only busy on game days. It felt more like an ordinary place where people came and went and spent time. The official shop in the middle of it existed in the same way, as somewhere to visit without waiting for a special event.

Inevitably, I found myself comparing it with the culture around stadiums in Korea. The view had a different texture from Jamsil Baseball Stadium, which was not a dome at the time, and I was struck by how the baseball facilities were linked organically with the spaces around them. Baseball felt established as a culture people lived alongside, before being an event they went to watch.

Glad that I did not simply walk past

I did not buy anything in the end, but it did not feel as though I left empty-handed. The visit helped me understand Tokyo Dome as a place with more dimensions. I remembered being able to feel the team's colours and stories outside the ground itself, and the unobtrusive way they sat within daily life. Our next stop was another shop in the same area, GIANTS STORE BALLPARK TOKYO. Its selection, and the things that caught my eye, differed from this jersey-focused store, so comparing the two became part of the pleasure of looking around.

After a circuit of Tokyo Dome, my attention naturally shifted to the merchandise shops. Tokyo Dome City, formed around that huge domed ground, already felt like a place where sport and entertainment had seeped into everyday life, so a visit to a shop seemed almost built into the route. Among them, GIANTS STORE BALLPARK TOKYO went beyond a straightforward souvenir shop. It offered a direct sense of how the culture of Japanese professional baseball found its way into the things people bought and used.

A whole baseball culture beyond the jersey

Unlike the official Giants shop we had just visited, which was centred on jerseys, this one had a much wider selection. Jerseys, of course, but also baseballs, cheering towels, slogan towels, key rings, soft toys, miniature bats and handheld fans: almost every imaginable form of baseball merchandise was gathered in one place. It did not feel like a simple line-up of objects stamped with players' names.

It felt more as though the ways fans supported a team inside and outside the ground, and the things they used in daily life, had been brought into the shop. What especially struck me was how readily each item suggested its use at a game. I pictured towels waving in the stands, and fans moving to a rhythm during a summer match. The texture was different from the cheering equipment I was used to seeing at Korean baseball grounds.

It felt as though a distinctively Japanese way of supporting baseball had been organized visually through its merchandise. The cheering fans caught my eye in particular. In Korea I was more familiar with light sticks and inflatable cheering sticks, but here a handheld fan seemed quite an important piece of equipment. It looked like something to wave with a chant and keep time with, not just something to cool yourself down.

The designs also went beyond a simple souvenir: team colours, logos and player characters were combined with enough care to make each one feel like a finished piece of cheering gear. Looking at them, I could begin to understand why Japanese baseball support is often described as a rhythmic group culture. Songs, hand movements and objects joined into a pattern, and the merchandise carried that culture beyond the event itself.

The range of supporters reflected in character goods

One side of the shop brought together soft toys and accessories using the Giants mascots and character versions of the players. Some products seemed plainly intended for children, but the designs were also restrained enough for adults to keep without feeling self-conscious. Cushions with cute, simplified player faces and little plush figures looked like easy ways to express being a baseball fan without making a heavy statement of it.

Seeing these character goods, I had the impression that the Giants were not imagining only one age group as their supporters. Families, long-time fans and people who enjoyed baseball culture more casually all seemed to have room here. That was probably why the shop felt like a display of the diversity of the fan base, rather than merely a sales floor.

Honestly, I was not a passionate Giants supporter. I had not come determined to buy a particular team's jersey or take home cheering equipment. What interested me nevertheless was that every object offered enough pleasure to look at even without loving the team. The designs, colours and arrangement worked together almost like an exhibition, and I found myself moving slowly through the shop.

It connected with my earlier impression of Tokyo Dome City: a place to walk around without seeing baseball, somewhere to spend time even without a game. The shop felt like an extension of that. Rather than mattering only when a special event was happening, it was an entrance into baseball culture, open within the course of ordinary life.

Another clue to what Tokyo Dome was

Leaving the shop, I looked back at Tokyo Dome once more. I thought again that this was more than a stadium: it was a place where sport had become naturally integrated into the city's everyday territory. Merchandise shops, cafés and amusement facilities sat together, with the domed ground at their centre. Here was another small confirmation of the entertainment complex I had sensed around me earlier.

After we had made our way around the Tokyo Dome area, the question of where to go next came up naturally. We had seen enough of the merchandise shops and surrounding facilities, and had also taken a break, so it felt like a good moment to move again. Our next destination was Ikebukuro. This was not simply a transfer across the city; it was a journey with a clear purpose for the people travelling with me.

From Tokyo Dome to Korakuen Station

Tokyo Dome City was close to several train lines, but Korakuen Station on the Marunouchi Line was the most straightforward choice for Ikebukuro. It was not difficult to walk there from the dome, and the route fitted naturally. Leaving that large complex and making our way down into a station felt like a chance to put the view we had just seen in order. Away from the stadium, rides and shops all mixed together above, descending underground brought me back to the feeling of being a traveller in transit.

Korakuen to Ikebukuro on the Marunouchi Line was a short ride of about eight minutes. The fare I noted that day was around 180 yen, so the journey itself made little demand on us. When walking around Tokyo, even a short train ride can feel more tiring if it involves changing lines. This time, having no transfer to make was a comfort.

With only a short ride ahead of us, we talked a little more about our next stop on the train. The reason for going to Ikebukuro was clear: someone in our group was looking for Chainsaw Man merchandise.

Why Ikebukuro: the neighbourhood with Animate

Tokyo has several areas full of shops related to anime, but Ikebukuro is one of the first that comes to mind. In particular, it has a large Animate store, which feels a promising bet when looking for merchandise from a specific work. We were travelling with the hope that there would surely be something there, rather than wondering abstractly where we might go.

Ikebukuro struck me less as a sightseeing district than a neighbourhood where people gathered with something in mind. Shopping, subculture, anime and game shops were concentrated there, and the routes through the area followed those interests. Our visit, too, had a definite reason rather than being a casual stop on the way somewhere else. Something a companion had said also helped us choose it.

They had been to Akihabara before, but had never visited Ikebukuro, despite its similar reputation for otaku culture. The thought of a place whose name they knew so well but had never seen stayed with me. This seemed a good opportunity to go. Even two centres of the same subculture would have different atmospheres and textures.

So this visit to Ikebukuro was more than a journey aimed at one Animate store. It was a chance to encounter another face of Tokyo that had not yet been experienced. It also meant walking alongside someone else's first visit, rather than merely returning to somewhere familiar myself. Taken purely as a journey, Korakuen to Ikebukuro was a very short stretch.

Yet, as a movement away from the huge space of Tokyo Dome and into another texture of the city, it felt like a more important turn than I had expected. We were leaving baseball, performance and large-scale facilities for a completely different world of anime and merchandise. Perhaps that was why those eight minutes felt like more than a subway ride. They were a bend in the flow of the trip, a passage preparing the next story.

Ikebukuro was a neighbourhood I had visited before. I remembered stopping briefly during the daytime on a Tokyo trip that March. But what had stayed with me most was not the district's atmosphere so much as the weather. Rain had suddenly turned to snow, and, caught off guard, I had hurried into a nearby café for shelter.

Inside was warm compared with the cold outdoors; perhaps the contrast made my body go slack, because I remembered even nodding off for a little while. That Ikebukuro had been somewhere to stay out of the weather rather than a view I was actively seeing. The streets and the neighbourhood's expression had therefore not remained very clear in my mind.

This time everything was different. Ikebukuro in November was cool, without rain or snow. In night air that was just right for walking, I could finally move through the streets consciously taking in the area after dark.

Ikebukuro in the November night air

After sunset, Ikebukuro was brighter than I had expected. Light from large commercial buildings and signs filled the streets, and people kept coming even though it was getting late. People who looked as though they were heading home from work, groups who seemed to have finished meeting friends, others carrying shopping bags: their separate purposes joined into a continuous, natural flow. Compared with Akihabara, Ikebukuro at night felt a little more like a commercial district rooted in everyday life.

Rather than everything clustering around a particular taste, there was a stronger sense of different kinds of people mixed together. Perhaps that was why I felt at ease rather than on edge as I walked. The November air was not cold, and I could comfortably keep going without a heavy coat. It gave me room to slow down and look around without insisting on a destination. Even views I might have passed without noticing in daylight came into sharper focus at night.

If Ikebukuro in March had been somewhere to take shelter, Ikebukuro in November was somewhere to walk. On the earlier visit, the weather had forced me to stay; on this one, I had deliberately brought my feet here. Again I felt how completely a place can change its impression according to the time, season and context of a journey.

The Ikebukuro I remembered under March snow was a blurred, still scene. This night's Ikebukuro was much clearer. Moving people, lit signs, open shops and myself walking slowly between them: all those things came together to make the district as it existed at this particular moment.

A brief impression before the next stop

There was, in fact, a separate purpose behind our walk through Ikebukuro: the merchandise a companion was looking for, and the anime shop at the centre of that search.

I had already been to Animate in Ikebukuro once. The memory of finding my way there on that March Tokyo trip, as the rain changed to snow around me, was still quite clear. That visit had largely been about seeing somewhere I felt I ought to see while in Ikebukuro. This one had a much more definite purpose. Instead of slowly exploring the ten-storey shop, we were making a quick search centred on the Chainsaw Man merchandise my companion wanted. Although it was the same place, both the atmosphere I felt and our route through it were quite different from before.

An unexpected scene outside the shop

On arriving, I first noticed promotional staff in anime-character costumes. They were handing out leaflets in front of the store and drawing people's attention, and it felt more like a small event than ordinary advertising. In a neighbourhood with as much foot traffic as Ikebukuro, such a scene did not seem especially out of place. In front of Animate, though, it seemed to fit in a slightly particular way.

The identity of the place as an anime-related space came across without anyone needing to explain it. Our question this time was simple: how much Chainsaw Man merchandise would there be? Rather than searching every part of the shop ourselves, we asked a member of staff nearby. The response was quick and friendly, as I had come to expect in a large Japanese store, and we were directed to the floor with the relevant products.

There was less Chainsaw Man merchandise on display than I had hoped. It was not entirely absent, but the choice fell short of what the name Animate Ikebukuro Main Store had led me to imagine. I could not tell whether stock had already sold or whether that was simply the selection at the time. What was clear was that there was not much for us to choose from that day. We still paused to look at the goods and took a few photographs before deciding we had checked what we needed to check. The visit was more a matter of confirming things and drawing a line under the search than spending time deeply exploring.

A day when I did not have to see every floor

On my previous visit, I had gone up and down from the first basement to the ninth floor, experiencing Animate through spaces arranged around different themes. This time, I did not need to verify that enormous scale all over again. Having experienced it once, I already knew what sort of place it was, which made it easier to leave without lingering regret.

That made the visit lighter. Some days, it was all right not to see every floor or spend hours looking around. Being able to make that choice during a trip took some weight off the visit. We were disappointed not to find enough Chainsaw Man goods, but our next choice became clear instead: we would go to Akihabara tomorrow.

As we left, I looked up at the building once more. The huge, ten-level specialist anime shop was still there, still drawing people in. This time, I was simply ready to move towards the next destination rather than remain inside for long.

Once we had finished in Ikebukuro, we went to Shin-Okubo for dinner. It was closer than I had imagined and an easy enough train journey. There was a clear reason for coming this far. At around the same time the previous year, Kano Miyu's birthday concert had been held at R's Art Court in Shin-Okubo, and afterwards the place where we had naturally gathered to eat was this restaurant, Bulmak Yeolsam.

There had been far more of us then, and the night had carried the heat and excitement of the concert straight into dinner. Perhaps that was why my strongest memory was less of eating pork belly in Tokyo than of a place where we had ended that night together. I felt a little sorry that fewer people were here this year, but the smaller gathering also suited taking those memories out again and slowly revisiting them.

One year later, opening the same door

Bulmak Yeolsam looked much as I remembered it. It was a Korean restaurant fitting naturally into the lanes of Shin-Okubo, a place that, for the moment of opening its door, felt little different from a pork-belly restaurant in Korea despite standing in the middle of Japan. My body seemed to remember before I needed to ask whether this was the right place.

After eating here the previous year, we had left a piece of writing on the restaurant wall: the date, a short message, a trace of how we had felt. It was true that this time I was almost more eager to find out whether the writing remained than to eat the meal itself. A year had passed, and I had no idea how many people had come through in between, so I felt cautious rather than full of expectation. Then, looking at the wall, I saw something I had not quite expected.

The writing we had left last year was still there. Its position, and even the marks around it, had scarcely changed. A peculiar feeling rose in me. It was not merely that a little writing had survived; it was the feeling that a fragment of the time we had left behind still existed somewhere in this room.

One of my companions remembered writing on a different wall the previous year. We checked the other side in case that trace remained too, but the situation there was different. The owner told us that the wallpaper had been replaced, apparently after too much writing had accumulated. All the messages on that wall had gone.

My companion gave a slightly deflated laugh. Their observation that this side had disappeared left us little to do but let that memory pass into laughter as well. Instead, we left a fresh piece of writing on this visit. In the end, we had come to the same place in two consecutive years and left a trace in the same way.

We had not planned a tradition, but looking back, perhaps this sort of repetition was one of the most honest records a journey could leave. There was no need to manufacture meaning. When time and place overlapped, the stories accumulated on their own.

A set meal, with cold noodles added at the end

At Bulmak Yeolsam this time, we ordered a set built around pork belly rather than choosing separate dishes one by one. The arrangement was fairly simple, but once it reached the table it felt more substantial than I had expected. Pork belly, marinated pork, a scallion pancake and soybean-paste stew made up the set, and we added cold noodles separately. At its centre were the two kinds of meat.

The pork belly went onto the hotplate first; as it cooked and released its fat, kimchi, garlic and scallions grilled alongside it. Though we were eating it in Japan, the method of cooking and the overall character of the flavour were not very different from Korea. The seasoning did seem a little gentler, as though adjusted in a direction that made it easy for everyone at the table to share.

The marinated pork had a soy-sauce-based seasoning that developed sweetness and a grilled aroma over the heat. It gave a contrast to the plainer pork belly and suited rice or lettuce wraps. As part of a set, having two meats to alternate between was quite satisfying. A scallion pancake and soybean-paste stew filled out the meal beside them.

The pancake arrived large enough to fill its plate, with the familiar crisp edges and moist centre. It was easy to take a piece between bites of meat, and it gave us a change from the richer flavours. In the end we could not finish it. We asked a member of staff to pack the remainder, which meant we could eat it again at our accommodation the following morning. Dinner from the night before continued into breakfast the next day.

The soybean-paste stew arrived bubbling in a stone pot, with plenty of tofu and vegetables and an honest, straightforward flavour. A spoonful of broth between bites of meat made the set feel naturally balanced. The mild taste fitted well with the rest of this Korean meal in Japan. Then there were the naengmyeon, the cold noodles we ordered in addition.

The set had already left us quite full, but after meat, pancake and stew, cold noodles seemed a fitting way to finish. They came in the chilled-broth style, with noodles, cucumber, tomato and a boiled egg neatly arranged over clear broth. They cleared away the richness and gave a definite sense that the meal was complete. The tomato on top was particularly noticeable to me, different from the naengmyeon I ate in Korea.

Seen that way, dinner at Bulmak Yeolsam was a dependable Korean set meal completed with an extra bowl of cold noodles. No individual dish made an especially loud statement; the combination worked through the natural flow of eating them together. Last year, we had hurriedly grilled meat at a table where the conversation never stopped, still carrying the excitement of a concert that had just ended.

This time the meal was calmer, a chance to look back over the time between. The same room, the same food, but conversation at an entirely different temperature. Even that difference felt like another memory the place had given us.

The different meanings left by the same place

Bulmak Yeolsam was no longer simply a Korean restaurant in Shin-Okubo. It had become a kind of reference point I would think of from time to time each year. Last year's night and this year's overlapped, and the time between them connected naturally. I did not know whether I would return on some future trip to Tokyo. But it had already gained enough meaning through becoming a second choice, rather than remaining a single chance encounter.

Before our final journey of the day, we did not go straight to board a train. As soon as we entered Shin-Okubo Station, we first sought out a place we knew was there: the memorial to Lee Soo-hyun inside the station. Lee was a Korean student who lost his life on January 26, 2001, while trying to rescue someone who had fallen onto the tracks at Shin-Okubo. I knew the story, but reading the words of remembrance in that very station felt different from hearing about it at a distance. I stopped for a moment before the fact that someone's attempt to save another person, and the sacrifice it cost, remained here in this place.

A small space where remembrance felt clear

The memorial stood quietly to one side of the station and was smaller than I had imagined. There were no elaborate decorations or striking presentation. Instead, the circumstances of the incident and his actions were recorded in concise sentences, and standing before them naturally slowed my steps. Among the people hurrying past, this little space gave the feeling that time had paused.

We had not happened across it; we had deliberately come to find it. It was not a stop squeezed casually into the travel route, but a place I wanted to face at least once before bringing the day to an end. Shin-Okubo was always lively with Korean restaurants, culture and people, which made the presence of such a quiet place of remembrance at its centre reach me more deeply. When we came back out of the station after seeing the memorial, an entirely different view unfolded.

It was Shin-Okubo at night: neon signs, shop lights and people moving through the streets. The district felt even more alive than in the daytime, though it was also the hour when the day's tiredness began to settle. The contrast between the stillness of the memorial we had just seen and the busy street in front of us made its meaning clearer. Only after boarding the train from Shin-Okubo to Nippori did I fully feel that the day was ending.

The lingering feelings from the concert, the views around Tokyo Dome, Ikebukuro at night and dinner in Shin-Okubo: at the end of all those scenes, what remained was less their brightness than the weight of a person's choice, their courage and the act of remembering it. Travel is a time for seeing new things, but it can also bring us face to face again with stories we already know. The Lee Soo-hyun memorial at Shin-Okubo Station felt likely to become one of the quietest, yet longest-lasting, scenes of this Tokyo journey.

The third day of the trip began, naturally enough, in Akihabara. We had looked for Chainsaw Man merchandise in Ikebukuro the day before, but the choice was smaller than expected and had left us wanting more. The next choice was clear: in the end, we would have to go to Akihabara. My companion had the purpose of finding those goods, but, even after several visits, the neighbourhood also had an odd pull that kept bringing me back.

It was somewhere I remembered exploring all day with a British friend on a Tokyo trip in 2019. That friend liked Japanese subculture too, so we had naturally come here looking for merchandise from the works each of us enjoyed. Rather than selecting particular stores beforehand, we had roamed the streets, stepping into whatever caught our eye with the hope that somewhere like this might hold something. Returning now, it was the conversations and scenes from walking together then, rather than the view alone, that first came back to me.

Sofmap, a familiar name again

Sofmap was one of the signs that naturally caught my eye in central Akihabara. This time we visited the Sofmap AKIBA Amusement building, a shop centred on anime, figures, games and character goods. In my memory, Sofmap was also a name associated with computers and electronic equipment.

In the Amusement building we entered, though, anime, games and figures came first. Even beneath that same sign, these were the products I was looking for in Akihabara. The reason for returning was simple: I hoped there would at least be something here. Sofmap felt like one of the more promising places to check when searching for merchandise in the district.

The visit was clearly different from 2019. Back then, the pleasure had been looking slowly around each floor. This time we had a specific task: checking for Chainsaw Man goods quickly. As soon as we entered, we asked a member of staff where to go and kept our route mostly to the section they indicated.

The store was still complicated, with a considerable volume of products on display. Figures, key rings, cards, acrylic stands: there was plenty of variety, but Chainsaw Man occupied less of it than we expected. I had the impression that a lot might already have sold because the work was popular, and some items remained only as display pieces.

The disappointment from Ikebukuro the previous day returned. Akihabara had seemed a place where anything might be available, but even here the particular item you wanted did not always have an answer. In the end, Sofmap brought no decisive find either. We would have to continue searching other shops in Akihabara.

A short stay somewhere between browsing and searching

Moving according to our purpose meant we did not stay long. We did not explore all eight levels or spend much time in sections for other works. In the past, I might have taken the opportunity to see this and that while I was there. This time, I had neither much room in the day nor much inclination to do so.

Yet the time did not feel meaningless. It was more a reminder of why I was in Akihabara at that particular moment. Where the space itself had once been the destination, I was now moving with a clear reason and context. Again I felt how the same place could have a different density of experience when the nature of the trip changed.

Leaving the Sofmap Amusement building, we naturally talked about our next stops: Animate, capsule-toy shops and other specialist merchandise stores. Beneath the conversation was a shared wish to resolve at least some of yesterday's disappointment before this day was over. Akihabara was still complicated, still stimulating, still a neighbourhood that could not be finished in one go. For that very reason, it felt as though our day there had only just begun.

In Akihabara, Kotobukiya was almost a name that needed no explanation. Anyone with even a little interest in figures or Japanese subculture was likely to have heard of it or stepped inside. This was not my first visit either. I had been once on a Tokyo trip in 2019, then again in March 2025. Several more months later, the search for Chainsaw Man merchandise brought me naturally to a third visit.

Returning to Kotobukiya in search of Chainsaw Man

Our reason for going to Kotobukiya was simple. A companion was looking for Chainsaw Man goods, and, once in Akihabara, it seemed worth checking at least once. But this time we did not have the leisure to look slowly as I had before. We were still near the beginning of a day that involved one shop after another, so our approach was to look if the goods were there and leave promptly if they were not.

In the end, we did not find what we wanted. There were a few related products, but not the selection we had hoped for, and we decided there was little reason to spend more time. Our stay was shorter than expected, and we soon moved towards the next destination.

Nevertheless, I did not remember Kotobukiya only as a shop that lacked the goods we wanted. It was somewhere that already held personal memories through several visits. My first visit in 2019 was still fairly clear. Akihabara itself had felt intensely stimulating then, and Kotobukiya seemed a space at the centre of that feeling. The ground floor displayed relatively mainstream character products, while the higher floors opened into more specialized worlds.

It was one of the first places where I strongly felt how extraordinarily detailed a figure could be. Returning in March 2025 had carried a different mood. Rather than needing to buy anything, I had mostly wanted to walk again through somewhere that had once made an impression. The layout and displays had not changed very much, and I remembered finding that continuity unexpectedly welcome.

The shortest visit of the three

This was the shortest of my three visits. We had a clear purpose in looking for Chainsaw Man goods, and, when that purpose was not met, we moved on without regret. I did not go up and down every floor as before or stand for long in front of the display figures. But that did not make the visit feel without meaning. Instead, I became more conscious that this was now somewhere I had passed through several times, in one way or another.

First with wonder, then with recollection, and now as a stop on a journey with a particular aim. I found it interesting that the same place could play a different role each time. We had gained nothing in the search for merchandise, but the visit made me think again about why I kept returning. Leaving Kotobukiya, we slipped back into the streets of Akihabara.

The reason for visiting Animate on this Akihabara outing was clear. It continued the search for Chainsaw Man goods we had begun the day before, and it seemed one of the most realistic places to hope that something would turn up. Animate was one of Akihabara's representative subculture stores and usually felt a promising choice when searching for a particular work.

I had, in fact, been to the Akihabara branch before, on a Tokyo trip in 2019. My memory of it was quite different, though. It had felt rather small overall and somehow not entirely organized. There was a lot of stock, but the route through it was complicated; the first impression left in me was that everything had simply been packed in as tightly as possible.

A different Animate Akihabara after a few years

The Animate Akihabara I returned to looked distinctly different from that older memory. What struck me first was its scale and sense of order. Instead of the Animate I recalled, it operated in a large, tidy building, with a noticeably different exterior. Inside felt much more organized too.

Genres and individual works were separated relatively clearly by floor, and the wide aisles made moving around easy. Rather than feeling lost over where to begin, I found a layout that let someone arriving with a purpose head towards the right place. The difference between the shop I remembered in 2019 and the one I walked through that day in November 2025 felt substantial.

Chainsaw Man was, once again, the point of our visit. We asked a member of staff where to find it and reached the relevant shelves fairly quickly. There, at last, I spotted a figure that caught my eye. After visiting several shops since the previous day without much success, I felt more pleased at that moment than I had expected.

My companion decided to buy without hesitation, and I checked the price once more myself. It was less burdensome than I had imagined, and I thought that one figure at this price would make a good reminder of the trip. So I picked one up too. The figure I bought was Denji, the protagonist of Chainsaw Man. I had not immersed myself deeply in the work, but it had kept appearing as a thread running through this journey. An object that could stand for that thread felt meaningful enough.

A satisfying end to a visit with a clear purpose

This Animate visit had a slightly different character from my earlier Akihabara walks. I had not entered mainly to browse. I had come with a clear purpose, achieved it and left. Perhaps that was why the satisfaction was greater despite not spending long inside. Where I might once have been struck first by the sheer amount of merchandise, this time what remained was the feeling of having found exactly what I needed. Over those years, the changes had probably been in more than the building and layout. My own way of approaching the place had changed too.

When I thought of figures in Akihabara, Radio Kaikan was still the first place that came to mind. I had never missed it on my Tokyo trips in 2018 and 2019, and the memories were still fairly sharp: narrow passages, shops with entirely different characters from floor to floor, and countless figures packed into glass display cabinets. Back then I had taken in the place with the wonder of discovering that such a world existed, rather than searching for a particular work. On this trip, I naturally returned to Radio Kaikan.

This time, though, our purpose was much clearer. My companion was looking for Chainsaw Man goods, and I too hoped that something would turn up somewhere. But after a circuit inside, we reached a judgment sooner than expected. Chainsaw Man merchandise was not completely absent, but the amount of ground we would have to cover did not seem a good match for finding the specific kind of goods we wanted. Our next stop was therefore namco Akihabara, close to Radio Kaikan.

Up the escalator into a different world

The first thing I noticed on entering the building was the escalator. There was a strangely orderly feeling, distinct from the usual noise of a game arcade, and as we rose into brighter light, I had a sense that something very different was about to unfold. Reaching the floor above, I found my view filled with rows of capsule-toy machines.

There were not merely a few lined up. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of them stood along walls, around pillars and in islands through the middle, filling the entire floor. My first thought was how we could possibly look at all of them. Close behind came the vague hope that surely one among them would have what we wanted.

These machines dispense a random capsule toy and are commonly called gacha. I had never before seen a whole space filled with them in that way. Every machine had its own clear theme, different characters and a different concept. Anime, games, food, animals and miniature household objects: it seemed that anything small enough to fit in a capsule could become a product.

We naturally slipped into search mode. At first we looked at whatever caught our attention, but we soon changed strategy. Stopping at every machine would consume an endless amount of time. We divided up the rows and began scanning them, quickly reading the little posters above the capsules, checking the characters' names and moving straight on if they were not right.

Not this one. Another series here. A character I had never seen. Brief comments passed between us naturally, and before long our concentration had risen as though we were on a treasure hunt. I kept expecting Chainsaw Man's distinctive drawing style or colours to catch my eye, but so many other works had a similar atmosphere that I repeatedly confused them.

Now and then we stopped, wondering whether we had found it, only to discover on closer inspection that it was usually a completely different series. We went along several rows, then several more, without finding the machine we wanted. Meanwhile, people never stopped turning the gacha handles. The sounds of dropping capsules and rolling coins continued like the background music of the room.

We found no machine, but the experience remained

By the time we had gone almost all the way around the floor, we naturally began to slow down. We had certainly heard that there were capsule machines for Chainsaw Man merchandise, but we were coming to the conclusion that, at least in this space, we had not found them. I would be lying if I said there was no disappointment, yet the visit did not leave only an empty feeling.

What stayed more clearly was the discovery of another way people bought and played in Akihabara. In a figure shop, you looked at the object, compared prices and decided whether to purchase. Gacha depended entirely on chance. The uncertainty of what might come out turned the whole room into a game, and participation itself seemed almost more important than the purchase.

If Radio Kaikan was a place of display and choice, the Bandai Namco capsule-toy shop felt closer to a place of probability and repetition. Both belonged to the same subculture, but their approaches were completely different, and that impressed me. The fact that the two spaces stood so near each other seemed in itself to reveal something about Akihabara.

In the end we left without trying a single machine. Still, I felt that the visit had helped me understand the neighbourhood a little better. We had not obtained the Chainsaw Man goods we wanted, but the time spent wandering through that space in search of them remained a clear scene of the trip.

Leaving the Bandai Namco capsule-toy shop, I cannot honestly say the mood was entirely bright. I still had a vague conviction that the goods must be somewhere, but we had already tried several places, and both our energy and our concentration were beginning to dip. Even so, having come all the way to Akihabara, we could not stop here. Searching for Chainsaw Man merchandise had somehow hardened into a mission. Our next destination was TRADER's main store. I knew the shop, with its forceful-looking sign, as a long-established name in Akihabara, but this was the first time I had actually gone inside.

A much bigger shop than I expected

My first impression on stepping through the entrance was that it was larger than I had imagined. From outside it had looked like another figure shop, but inside the space was clearly divided by floor, with the character of the stock changing a little on each level. One floor leaned towards relatively mainstream works, another towards more specialized tastes, and the displays were tightly packed. Where the earlier shops had felt centred on display or atmosphere, TRADER strongly gave the impression of competing through sheer quantity.

Several versions of the same character stood alongside one another in the glass cabinets, across a broad range of prices. I naturally began to think that this might be the place. Our purpose was, once again, clear: Chainsaw Man. By now, even hearing the name was almost enough to make me laugh, but that showed how central the search had become to the trip.

We naturally split up the floors, some of us checking downstairs and others going higher. The first few minutes brought little. Familiar characters, popular series and line-ups we had already seen more than enough of in other shops continued past us. Just as I began wondering whether this would be another unsuccessful stop, we halted in a corner of one floor.

At last, Chainsaw Man figures

Inside a glass cabinet, mixed among goods from other works, I noticed several Chainsaw Man figures. Among the displayed boxes were products bearing the name and image of Power, one of its characters. The figures were not large, but this was definitely the work we had been searching for. The atmosphere changed immediately.

My companion moved towards the cabinet almost by reflex and quickly began checking the price labels and condition. A short observation that they had been here all along seemed to compress all our unsuccessful stops, journeys and repeated searches into a few words. After moving from place to place and finally reaching a result, the satisfaction was much greater; saying we had kept getting up after repeated setbacks hardly felt like an exaggeration. Looking distinctly pleased, my companion chose a figure and decided to buy it.

What happened next interested me too. Another companion, who had not shown much interest in figures, stopped in this shop as well. Was it the way TRADER arranged its displays? I could not say exactly, but after looking at the cabinet for a while, they too picked one out. The scene stayed with me. More than the simple result of finding merchandise, I was interested in the way the space nudged at people's tastes. It could make even someone who had seemed uninterested start to consider buying just one. That felt like part of the shop's appeal.

A memory that lasted because we finally found something

Our visit to TRADER did not end as mere shopping. The experience of reaching a success after repeated failures, and sharing that moment, made the memory firmer. If we had found Chainsaw Man goods in the first shop we entered, this scene might not have remained nearly so clear.

Walking through the backstreets of Akihabara, I noticed a shop with an atmosphere rather different from the familiar anime-and-game stores. Metal ornamentation, a medieval-looking logo, little tanks and soldiers on display: each detail seemed to establish a genre of its own, announcing that this was neither Animate nor an ordinary figure shop. It was Warhammer Store & Cafe Tokyo. Quite apart from the people travelling with me on this trip, I remembered an acquaintance I used to play board games with who was particularly fond of Warhammer.

Perhaps because those games came back to me, my first response on seeing the sign in Akihabara was a warm sense of recognition. The shop had no direct connection with the route we had planned, but the overlap with my own memories and interests drew me towards it almost without thinking. Once inside, I found enough to hold my attention for this to become considerably more than a quick look around a shop.

What is Warhammer?

Warhammer began as a miniature tabletop game created by the British company Games Workshop. It is a hobby in which you assemble tiny soldiers, paint them by hand, then set out a battlefield on a table and fight battles with them. The card game I used to play was one of several games spun off from that setting. The soldiers and tanks that first caught my eye in the shop represented another form of the world I had encountered on cards.

From the future wars of Warhammer 40,000 to fantasy settings, Warhammer's worlds have found their way into a range of games. Warhammer: Invasion, the card game I remembered, was one of them. It made more sense, then, to see this shop as a place for the hobby of building, painting and playing with miniatures on a table, rather than as a card-game shop. I had played the Warhammer card game with that acquaintance some years before.

The struggle between the human Empire and Chaos, the way the factions matched up against one another, and the weight of the decisions required every turn gave it a depth beyond what I might normally expect from a card game. Because those memories had stayed with me, coming across a physical Warhammer space in the middle of Akihabara felt familiar before it felt strange. It was as though a fictional world I knew had extended into an actual place I could enter.

Another world, beginning at the entrance

As soon as I stepped inside, I could see miniature tanks, soldiers and dioramas recreating scenes of battle. They did not look like objects placed there merely as decoration; they seemed to bring the atmosphere of the Warhammer universe into the room. The cold tension of a battlefield, and the traces of all the choices made within it, were contained in the detail of the models.

Beside them were worktables. There were noticeably many visitors from overseas, particularly Western visitors, and the space clearly served a purpose beyond selling things: people assembled and painted there. They held their brushes with concentration, absorbed in finishing their own miniatures. It was a scene somewhere between a workshop and a shop.

What I saw felt like more than simply a place devoted to a hobby. A shop usually means products laid out for sale, but this one also made room for the process by which customers created something themselves. It was an entirely different sort of experience from visiting a figure shop, even here in the same Akihabara. The interior had two broad functions.

One side sold finished miniature models, cards, rulebooks and other related goods; another was arranged as worktables where people could assemble miniatures themselves. The completed models had a different character from ordinary plastic model kits. With war as their subject, the appeal lay not just in attractive shapes but in tactical poses and positions that suggested the movement of a battle.

The identity of each faction, and even the smallest details, seemed to contain a warrior's story. The settings were so extensive that even understanding what role a particular character played looked as though it could require a fair amount of background knowledge for a beginner. For someone like me, who had enjoyed board games, this merchandise area meant something else as well. It was striking to see the Warhammer world I had known on cards and boards given such tangible, physical form.

The worktables, where the battlefield lingered

The places I spent longest looking at were the worktables and displays rather than the seats for having a drink. Miniatures carrying that unmistakable Warhammer atmosphere stood on display, and beside them people were refining their own creations. Inside a shop where you could buy something and leave, there was also time and room for people who loved this world to stay and work with their hands.

I could see people assembling or painting miniatures in one part of the shop, while conversations developed naturally around them. Watching them talk about battle rules, the setting and the miniatures they were working on, I thought it looked a little like time spent gathering the lingering atmosphere of a battlefield after a game had ended.

Looking at that scene brought back my own memories of playing Warhammer: strategies calculated over the cards, moments spent reading the timing of an opponent's attack, the tension continuing into the final turn. I was not sitting down to play a game here, but something of that same atmosphere was certainly present. As I looked around, I understood that this was more than a shop for merchandise. It was a place to immerse yourself in the world of Warhammer, and also a place that embraced the process of completing something with your own hands.

The rulebooks, miniature instructions and artwork along the walls left a clear impression of a shop that was also a workshop and a community space. Warhammer Store & Cafe became an experience in its own right. I had come in while browsing figures and other goods, but what it eventually called up was my own taste and the memory of playing board games with an acquaintance. Moving between the world I knew through cards and its miniature counterpart, I realised that the range of hobbies I could encounter in Akihabara was broader than I had imagined.

After walking from shop to shop around Akihabara in search of Chainsaw Man goods, there came a point when my legs began sending their own message. We knew what we were looking for, but visiting so many stores in succession since morning had taken more energy than I expected. Just as I was thinking that we ought to rest, I noticed a café sign: Doutor Coffee Shop Sotokanda 1-chome. We stopped following the merchandise trail and went inside. Doutor is a coffee chain you see all over Japan.

For a reader familiar with Korea, its place in everyday life is closer to affordable chains such as Mega Coffee or Compose than to a destination café. It does not announce itself through glamorous or particularly fashionable interiors; its message is more straightforward: come in and have a coffee before you go on. The yellow sign reinforces that impression. My first feeling was that this was somewhere people who worked and lived in the neighbourhood naturally came and went, rather than a special space designed for visitors.

Although it was a little after lunchtime, the café was quite busy. Some people sat alone drinking coffee and looking at their phones; others worked with laptops open, while groups of two or three chatted briefly. The scene carried on naturally, everyone spending time at their own pace. For a moment I wondered whether there would be anywhere to sit, but luckily I spotted a vacant seat towards the back and could settle down to catch my breath.

What stood out most about this Doutor, though, was something else: it still had an indoor smoking room in one corner. That is a sight that has almost disappeared from cafés in Korea, which made it feel all the more unfamiliar. We did not use it, but seeing people smoking behind the glass partition made me think that this part of café culture was still very much present in Japan. It is sometimes these small differences that stay with me longest when I travel.

There was nothing especially remarkable about the coffee itself, but neither was it disappointing. What mattered here was closer to recovery than a memorable revelation of flavour. A warm cup of coffee, somewhere to sit for a while, an atmosphere that was not too noisy: that was enough. We used the time to work out where to go next, and recovered enough breathing room to start moving again.

After finishing our search for goods in Akihabara, we took the train to Gotanda Station. We had a clear destination: Irugi Shrine, in the area near the station. It was not somewhere we absolutely had to visit to fulfil the itinerary, but this trip kept producing places I wanted to see even if they required a slight detour, and Gotanda was one of them.

The name itself was not unfamiliar. Although I had never been there, the capsule hotel called Gotanda C seemed to appear without fail whenever I searched Agoda for somewhere to stay in Tokyo, so the place name had already lodged itself somewhere in my mind. Perhaps that was why, even before I actually arrived, I thought of it as a neighbourhood I had wanted to see at least once.

The first thing I noticed on getting off the train was the noise. Unlike a subway station buried deep underground, the trains here ran close to street level, bringing the platforms, roads and residential streets much nearer to one another than I had expected. Every passing train carried the sound of metal and a vibration I could feel directly; it was quite distinct. At first I thought how loud it was, but within a few minutes the noise began, strangely, to feel like background sound.

Trains cut through the middle of an ordinary living neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood accepted their noise as a natural part of daily life. Rather than feeling out of place, it seemed like a signal that I had entered one of Tokyo's older residential areas. Gotanda does, in fact, mix offices with residential streets. During the day there are people moving about for work; at night it becomes a relatively quiet local neighbourhood.

It occupies a point somewhere in between: less glittering than a major entertainment district, but not as hushed as a purely residential area either. Walk just a little way from the station and the atmosphere changes quickly. Instead of large commercial facilities, smaller restaurants, older buildings and shops serving everyday needs begin to stand out. It felt strongly like a neighbourhood where people simply lived, rather than one arranged for tourists.

The scene was the opposite of the intense volume of information I had just experienced in Akihabara. There were fewer signs demanding attention and fewer places that made me feel I had to stop and take a photograph. In their place came room to look around naturally as I walked. Passing trains, the sounds of everyday life from deeper in the side streets, and footsteps moving at a steady pace found a curious balance.

Perhaps for that reason, Gotanda felt less like a neighbourhood that made me wonder what I ought to see, and more like somewhere the act of walking could itself be the purpose. After visiting so many merchandise shops and stores on this trip, that atmosphere was particularly welcome. I had seen the name many times in my head, but standing on the actual platform made the gap between the two rather interesting. A place name I had known only on a screen had become a space with real sounds and views.

So this was Gotanda, I thought. It is also an important interchange where the Yamanote Line, Tokyu Ikegami Line and Asakusa Line meet. That might explain why the station and its surroundings were busier than I had expected. Yet the density was not overwhelming in the way Akihabara or Shinjuku can be; what struck me was how comfortably the movement spread out.

Gotanda Station was only a stop on the way to Irugi Shrine that day, but it did enough to leave me thinking that I should remember this neighbourhood. Before moving off from the station towards the shrine, I turned to look back for a moment. Another train was passing the platform, and its noise was still clear. By then it no longer bothered me. It sounded, instead, like something that belonged to this particular neighbourhood.

By the time we arrived in Gotanda after spending the morning browsing merchandise shops in Akihabara, the atmosphere had changed completely. This was a lived-in neighbourhood rather than a sightseeing district, with office workers and residents going about their days on the streets. Even so, the purpose directing our movements remained the same: Chainsaw Man goods.

On the train to Gotanda, the acquaintance travelling with me kept searching for something on a phone, then came out with an unexpected piece of information: Lawson had sold Chainsaw Man merchandise too. We did not know whether any of it was still on sale, but that one remark more or less decided our next route. We would go into every Lawson we came across around Gotanda Station. A mission had begun that was purposeful and, at the same time, slightly playful.

The first one we entered was Lawson Nishigotanda 2-chome. Not far from the station, it was a thoroughly ordinary neighbourhood Lawson, with the sort of atmosphere that suggested most customers worked or lived nearby rather than visiting as tourists. The shelves were arranged in the familiar way of a Japanese convenience store. As soon as I opened the door, my eyes moved almost automatically towards the merchandise area, but the result was as expected: no Chainsaw Man products.

We checked near the till, beside the drinks refrigerator and in the promotional section without finding anything. Strangely, though, I was not especially disappointed. Saying that this was not the one and moving on to the next place had itself begun to feel like a game. If our search in Akihabara had been an exploration of shops, by now it had become something more like a neighbourhood mission.

This Lawson really was unremarkable in the most ordinary sense. The bento shelves carried meals that office workers might pick up, while the dessert display mixed seasonal specials with the regular range. There was also a section of socks and everyday necessities, exactly the sort of arrangement that would be useful if you suddenly needed something while travelling. There were no goods for us, but there was the reassuring steadiness of a convenience store, somewhere to catch our breath briefly in the middle of a complicated day.

By this stage we had used up a fair amount of energy, which may have been why the drinks and snacks in the refrigerators caught my eye so readily. It seemed a shame to come all this way and leave simply because there was no merchandise, and before long we had picked up a few drinks. This Lawson had nothing for our collection, but it had done its job as a small rest stop. What made this first Lawson visit meaningful was the process rather than the result.

There was something oddly enjoyable about looking for merchandise in the middle of Gotanda's everyday living spaces, away from the usual tourist gaze. After that, whenever we saw a Lawson sign around the station, our feet naturally turned towards it. We went into them one by one, remarking that one really was a local neighbourhood branch, another was a little bigger, another seemed to get a few visitors too. Through that process, the texture of Gotanda gradually began to show itself.

Even after reaching Gotanda Station, our purpose had not changed: we were still looking for Chainsaw Man merchandise. The little mission that began in Akihabara had extended into neighbourhood convenience stores, and Lawson signs were now the first things our eyes sought out in Gotanda too. This time we visited a branch very close to the station, on the east-exit side. It was easy to find, and we went in with the hope that somewhere so conveniently placed might have something.

This was our second Lawson search, another attempt to find what had not been in the first Nishigotanda store. Inside, it looked like a typical Japanese convenience store near a station. Perhaps it was a commuting period: there were a fair number of customers, and brief queues formed in front of the bento and drinks sections. On one part of the shelves I noticed several packages that looked like anime collaboration products, and for a moment I thought we might have found something.

It was not that there was absolutely nothing resembling Chainsaw Man merchandise. We did find collaboration items with a similar feel, and products arranged much like ones we had seen at another branch before. But they were not the precise goods we were looking for, the particular thing my acquaintance had hoped to find.

Several times we picked something up, hesitated briefly and put it down again; once more, none of it led to a purchase. There was a little disappointment, but strangely the thought that came first was where we should go next. Checking off destinations one by one had already become enjoyable in itself, and calling at Gotanda's convenience stores in turn felt like working through a small, pleasantly undemanding mission.

We visited three Lawson convenience stores in a row around Gotanda Station. Three is a definite enough number, yet because our search for Chainsaw Man goods had flowed from one shop straight into the next, even now I can briefly lose track of how many we went into. What I do remember clearly is that this was the last Lawson of the day. The search that began in Akihabara had carried us as far as Gotanda, and by this point I had relaxed into the feeling that it would be nice if we found something, but fine if we did not.

We went into this Lawson on the same small chance. We looked around and checked the merchandise area, but again there were no Chainsaw Man goods of the kind we wanted. There were similar collaboration products and promotional displays, but they were some way from the exact item we were after. Our merchandise mission seemed to be coming to a quiet end here.

Around then I was beginning to feel hungry. We had used up a good deal of energy visiting stores around Akihabara since morning, and it was an awkward time for a proper meal. So at this shop our attention changed direction a little, towards choosing something simple to eat.

We picked up some bread and coffee. The neatly arranged bread section typical of Japanese convenience stores, and a safe, familiar choice of coffee: there was nothing special about the combination, yet at that particular moment I found it rather satisfying. Perhaps it was because, no longer occupied by something we had to find, we were simply choosing what we needed right then.

As its name suggested, this Lawson was attached to Mitsui Garden Hotel Gotanda. That might explain why its atmosphere felt a little different from the branches near the station. People who seemed to live nearby or to be staying longer came and went naturally, rather than looking like tourists, and the shop's arrangement focused on everyday purchases. Looking around outside, I noticed several large residential buildings.

This felt less like a convenience store someone would deliberately travel to for merchandise and more like somewhere local people might use every day. Perhaps that made the failure to find our goods feel less disappointing here than elsewhere. As we paid and went outside, there was a natural agreement that it was time to rest. Someone mentioned a waterfront park nearby, and we decided to head there with the bread and coffee we had just bought. The search for merchandise had ended here, but the day itself was still unfolding.

After calling at three Lawson stores around Gotanda Station in search of Chainsaw Man goods, we finally turned towards Gotanda Fureai Mizube Hiroba and its boat landing, a small waterfront square. We had no grand destination in mind. It was simply a little neighbourhood waterside park we might easily have walked past, chosen because we wanted to sit down for a while. A waterway ran directly in front of the park, with railway tracks on the other side.

The scene could hardly have been further from the bustle of Akihabara. There were few people, and the sounds amounted mainly to the occasional passing train and the breeze moving along the water. With the bread and coffee we had bought at the convenience store, we found a place near the railing. It was an awkward hour to call this a late lunch, but the food was rather too substantial to think of as a snack.

Simple as the meal was, it felt quite satisfying in that moment. The sun had not yet set, so the sky was still light, while the colours around us were gradually leaning towards evening. The shadows of buildings and trees stretched across the surface, and each train passing in the distance seemed to leave a fine disturbance on the water. Watching without any particular thought, I felt my mind begin to slow with the scene.

What stayed with me most here was the view created by the trains. In Gotanda they do not disappear underground; they cut straight across residential streets and everyday living spaces. The noise is loud and the vibrations distinct. Yet, strangely, the sound did not feel intrusive. It felt like the rhythm of the neighbourhood.

Watching the trains cross the bridge unexpectedly brought back a childhood memory: going to a railway station for no special reason, standing at the end of the platform for a long time to watch trains arrive and leave, then heading home. Where they were going did not matter. The moving train was a scene in its own right, and that old feeling briefly overlapped with this one.

We did not actually spend long in the waterside park. It was a very short rest, literally enough time to catch our breath. But after a day spent moving from place to place in search of goods, using more energy than I had expected, this small pause played an important part.

The day that started in Akihabara had developed into a kind of mission to find Chainsaw Man goods, and by the time we reached Gotanda I was a little tired in body and mind. Irugi Shrine therefore felt less like simply another shrine we had stopped at, and more like a place to gather the threads of the day and catch my breath. Quietly settled among lived-in streets near Gotanda Station, it made its first impression through atmosphere rather than size.

Irugi is a local shrine serving the Osaki and Gotanda area of Tokyo's Shinagawa ward. Compared with famous shrines drawing crowds of visitors, this one sits much closer to the ordinary lives of its neighbours. Someone stopping to put their hands together on the way home from work, an elderly couple who appeared to have come on a walk, a family holding their child's hand: I liked the feeling that the shrine had slipped naturally into daily life rather than existing only for special occasions.

The grounds were small, well kept and calm. They offered reassurance before splendour, familiarity before grandeur. Perhaps that was why, as soon as I entered, the fatigue accumulated through the day seemed to slow by a beat.

Rabbit charms and ema: ways of leaving a wish

What I remember most clearly from this visit were the rabbit charm called an onegai usagi, a wishing rabbit, and the ema. Ema are small wooden plaques on which people write wishes before hanging them at a shrine. The little rabbit-shaped charm was not merely something decorative to carry around: it was made to hold a piece of paper on which you wrote your own wish. The very process of writing the wish, folding the paper and putting it inside the rabbit made an impression on me.

It felt closer to a prayer completed through my own participation than an amulet I simply bought and that was that. There was also a small wooden ema. I wrote my wish on it and hung it on the rack in the grounds myself. At the moment my handwriting joined the many other plaques, I felt a curious sense of connection with this place.

Alongside ordinary ema, I noticed several with large characters printed on them. Words suggesting ties between people, protection from misfortune, illness and disaster caught my attention first. Reading the explanation, I learned that you could detach the section bearing the character. I found that physical act of removing what you wanted to be rid of particularly striking. It was a different way of approaching a wish: transferring something I wanted to settle in my own mind onto a small wooden plaque in front of me.

Ginkgo nuts, and a memory carried home

One unexpected part of the visit was that the shrine was giving out ginkgo nuts. They appeared to have been gathered in the grounds and were intended to take away and prepare, rather than to eat there and then. After the trip, I briefly heated them in the microwave at home; they were surprisingly nutty and delicious, which helped make the experience memorable. It felt more special than bringing back a souvenir bought at a destination, as though I had brought home part of the season from the place itself.

Even after a little time had passed, they gave me a way to remember the air and atmosphere of that day. Irugi Shrine is not somewhere that makes me exclaim in amazement at its scale. It is somewhere that makes me quietly think how good it is to be there. The sound of Gotanda's trains, ripples in the waterside park, convenience-store bread and coffee, and this little shrine between them: together they allowed the shape of the day to fall naturally into place.

As our plans in Gotanda drew to a close, we travelled via Osaki Station and took JR back to Nippori. Watching lights pass the window along the way, I think I naturally began to feel that the trip was coming to an end. The merchandise mission and all our movement since daytime had used up a fair amount of energy. By the time we reached Nippori, we seemed to need a meal to bring the day gently to a close rather than an elaborate dinner.

We chose Haruki's Nippori branch. This was less a famous restaurant aimed at tourists than the sort of place local people might genuinely call at after work. The sign was unshowy and the interior simple. Open the door and the first things you saw were a meal-ticket machine, a long counter, and the familiar lighting and sounds of a Japanese ramen shop. The atmosphere suited the end of a day so well that it made me feel we had chosen the right place.

An unsettled stomach, and a choice of edamame

My stomach was feeling a little uncomfortable, perhaps because I had eaten the convenience-store bread too quickly earlier. I gave up on ramen and chose something that caught my eye on the menu: edamame, young soybeans boiled in their pods. It was the kind of dish you could have on the side with a drink, and at 230 yen that day it was an easy choice. When it arrived, I initially thought it would simply be a plate of beans, but one mouthful changed my mind.

The saltiness, the texture of the beans cooked just enough, and their warmth all worked together. I could not tell whether it was because I had not eaten them in a while or because this restaurant did them particularly well, but they tasted especially good. Most of my companions were trying edamame for the first time too. They picked up one pod after another and responded with real enthusiasm. We even ordered extra portions to take away when we left, which probably says enough about how pleased we were.

The others ordered ramen and karaage, Japanese fried chicken. The steaming bowls, generous pieces of chashu pork and crisp chicken looked like a fitting combination for dinner on the last night of a trip. We talked about how enjoyable it was to eat in places like this when travelling; comfort had taken the place of glamour.

The karaage in particular had just been fried and looked crisp outside and juicy within. Even as I photographed it, I thought how well it would go with a beer. I was content with cola rather than alcohol that day, but simply looking at the food spread across our table was enough to feel that the day was ending well.

The meal felt less like hunting out a celebrated restaurant and more like bringing the trip into order. In my mind, the route from Akihabara through Gotanda and back to Nippori was slowly settling. The small happenings of the afternoon, the quiet of the shrine, our rest by the water and the slight hunger in the convenience store: all those movements seemed to find a natural ending in this restaurant.

After finishing dinner at the ramen shop, I had the strange feeling that the day was not quite over. My companions had eaten their meals and I had had edamame, but perhaps because it was our last night away, simply returning to the accommodation felt a little too abrupt. A late-night snack became our next destination, and we walked towards the east exit of Nippori Station.

That was where Chiyoda Sushi's Nippori Station East Exit branch caught my eye. It was so close to the station that it could almost be described as attached to it, a shop devoted to takeaway sushi. There were no seats: the space focused entirely on ordering and packaging. At a glance it seemed designed for local residents and commuters buying sushi to take home.

Chiyoda Sushi is a takeaway sushi chain seen fairly often in Japan. This was not the experience of sitting opposite a chef at a high-end sushi restaurant and eating one piece at a time, but in return the price and convenience were clear. This branch displayed those qualities well. Ready-packed sushi sets were laid out neatly in the display, making the choice easy.

They cost around 1,000 yen per pack. That was certainly less of a financial commitment than eating a full meal at a specialist sushi restaurant, without making me feel the quality had dropped significantly. For a late-night meal back at our accommodation, I thought this level was almost ideal.

We had already taken extra edamame away from the ramen restaurant, so adding this sushi brought the last night's snack together naturally. Instead of hot ramen, we had sushi and edamame to eat at an unhurried pace. The combination suited the end of the journey. When we returned and opened the packages, I felt the day beginning to settle of its own accord. All the movement from Akihabara through Gotanda and back to Nippori, the hours spent looking for goods, the quiet moments at the shrine, and dinner: it was as though the whole sequence finally came to a close in front of this modest late-night meal.

After checking out of our accommodation, we gathered all our bags at once and set off for the airport. The fourth and final day was, quite literally, a day of movement. The destination was the airport, and the connection between us and it was the Keisei Skyliner. It was my first time boarding the Skyliner at Nippori Station, which gave this day a small distinction of its own.

From a QR code to a paper ticket: familiar, yet new

At Nippori Station, I collected the Skyliner ticket I had arranged in advance. Being able to finish near the entrance made the process straightforward.

Nippori's platforms: more to check, and more to watch

From the platform at Nippori, we could watch both ordinary trains and the Skyliner come in. Since this was our final journey to the airport, I checked the departure display and train-type signs several times. Standing on a platform for the first time made me pay a little more attention to making sure we boarded the right train. In return, I spent quite a while watching different trains arrive and leave.

Although it was not rush hour, the movement never stopped, and I could feel that this remained a station woven into ordinary daily life. Encountering that scene on the last leg of our trip gave me a curious sense of things drawing together. Once we boarded, the atmosphere changed distinctly. There was the Skyliner's characteristically quiet, orderly carriage, generous space between seats and room for luggage.

I felt a kind of steadiness different from the excitement at the beginning of the trip. It was then that the feeling of really going home became clear. As I watched Tokyo pass outside the window, scenes from the journey came back of their own accord: the merchandise mission in Akihabara, Gotanda's side streets and waterfront park, dinners and late-night food in Nippori. It felt as though each of those pieces was settling into place with the speed of the Skyliner.

Narita Airport Terminal 2·3 Station: reaching the end of the journey

The train arrived at Narita Airport Terminal 2·3 Station on schedule. As soon as I stepped onto the platform, I sensed that particular openness and calm belonging to an airport. All that remained now was to complete departure procedures and board the plane. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, in practical terms, the trip had reached its end here.

On the last day of the trip, we went first to Terminal 3 at Narita International Airport. Our own flight departed from Terminal 2, but one of our companions was flying with Jeju Air and had to leave earlier from Terminal 3. The natural plan was to have one more meal together before seeing them off, and that was how we came to share our last meal of the journey here.

Terminal 3 is particularly familiar to me as well. Having often used low-cost airlines, I had passed through it many times, and its routes, atmosphere and even the arrangement of the food court no longer felt strange. For that very reason, it is also a place where the sense of a trip coming to an end becomes especially clear. The food area in Narita's Terminal 3 always seems to offer plenty of choices.

I still have not tried them all, and whenever I look around I find myself thinking that perhaps I will eventually. This time, rather than following a special plan, we chose what looked most comfortable at that moment: Nagasaki Champon Ringer Hut. It is a chain you encounter all over Japan, but eating at Ringer Hut in an airport carries a slightly different feeling. With the context of a final meal added to it, even an ordinary menu looks a little different.

A bowl that made me think of Nagasaki, though I had never been

I have never actually gone to Nagasaki and eaten champon there, so I cannot say precisely how close this bowl came to the authentic thing. Yet taking a spoonful brought a small thought to mind: perhaps one day I would go to Nagasaki too. There were plenty of vegetables and seafood over the rich broth, and the noodles went down easily. It was neither excessive nor too light for a meal near the end of a trip. The gyoza we ordered alongside it were reliable too, and suitable for several of us to share.

Shared tables and a brief goodbye

This branch did not have its own separate dining seats; customers used the communal tables in Terminal 3. The eating area was therefore a little noisy, but that also let the rhythm of the airport come through directly. People passed pulling suitcases, others hurried while checking departure times, and perhaps some were already on their way back from a journey. We finished our meal at one of those tables, and our companion headed to the departure area first. It was only a brief farewell, but adding that one scene at the end of the trip made the day feel as though it had found a tidy conclusion.

According to our original plans, there would have been no reason to return to Narita Airport's Terminal 3 on this trip. We were departing from Terminal 2, and I had already pictured the end of the journey around that terminal. But our companion had an earlier flight with Jeju Air, so we naturally went back over to Terminal 3. The final day acquired an extra stretch of the journey that had not originally been on the itinerary.

Terminal 3 felt almost unusually familiar. Perhaps because I had passed through it so many times on low-cost flights between Korea and Japan, there was hardly any feeling of entering an unfamiliar airport. Thinking back, it was also the terminal I used when I first set foot in Japan in 2018. Since then I had naturally come through it whenever I flew with a budget airline, and as those visits accumulated it became somewhere my body could find its way before I consciously recalled the layout.

The routes are simple and intuitive enough that I can roughly sense where to go without studying every sign. While our companion checked in their bag, we walked slowly around the departure area and took photographs. There was no reason to hurry. I had passed through this space many times, but meeting it again at the end of a journey made its very familiarity feel comforting.

Even at the airport, Japan is a country of capsule toys

What first caught my eye in Terminal 3 were, unsurprisingly, the gacha machines: the capsule-toy dispensers. It was another moment that made the idea of Japan as a country of gacha feel entirely apt. Even here in the airport, in the airline-counter area before departure control, rows of machines seemed to belong quite naturally. The range stretched from character goods to little souvenirs.

Seen as a way to encourage one last purchase before a visitor leaves, it was a clever arrangement. Encountering a space like this at the end of a trip does tend to invite the thought that just one would do no harm. Even without turning a handle myself, I could enjoy the sound of the capsules and look at the designs, recognising a particularly Japanese atmosphere once more.

There were more kinds of shops around Terminal 3's departure area than I might have expected: souvenir stores, places to buy a simple snack or drink, and the familiar Lawson convenience store. The assumption that there would be nothing in front of the departure area did not apply here. The restaurants where we had eaten earlier were gathered in this same part of the terminal, offering enough choice for takeaway food or a quick meal. Perhaps that was why this felt less like somewhere merely to wait for departure and more like a small everyday space in which to gather the end of a journey. It was actually quite a good place to reorganise luggage, check the yen we had left and take our last photographs.

Parting in a place I had not expected to revisit

This visit had certainly not been on the original itinerary. Perhaps that was precisely why it stayed with me. I had passed through the space many times, yet the awareness that this was our last stop here on this trip made the scene look a little different. Our companion departed from here first. We exchanged a brief goodbye, then made our way back to Terminal 2.

After seeing our companion off at Terminal 3, we returned to Narita Airport's Terminal 2. It was a moment when the feeling of entering the final stage of the trip became unmistakable. Seeing more places no longer occupied the centre of the itinerary; getting home safely did. We were flying back with Air Premia, and I had already checked in online. All we needed to do at the airport was drop off our checked bags, so the procedure itself was relatively simple.

Air Premia at counter R: an uneventful check-in

Air Premia's check-in area was at counter R in Narita Airport Terminal 2. The signs were well arranged, and there was very little to make the route confusing. The queue was short, and our bags were accepted calmly. Nothing particularly memorable happened, which was precisely what made it good.

With no questioning or need for additional checks, everything went smoothly; it was a reassuring start to the final journey. Departure procedures afterwards were much the same. Perhaps because this was not a busy period, the wait was brief and both passport control and security went quickly.

There were no particular problems with the baggage check, and we passed through naturally without a moment that made us tense. By then, I could feel several days of movement and plans slowly falling into order. The end of a trip always leaves a slight emptiness, but at least in that moment the stronger impression was of everything being brought to a neat close.

Gate 84: a much longer walk than expected

After departure control, we checked our boarding gate: 84. The number alone meant very little, but once we began walking I understood it differently. We passed several moving walkways and crossed more than one point at which I thought we must surely be almost there before finally arriving. It would not have been much of an exaggeration to say that the walk seemed endless. Still, with all the formalities already completed without trouble, even this long passage felt less like a burden and more like time to collect my thoughts at the end of the journey.

Having used Terminal 3 frequently, I always find Narita Airport Terminal 2 noticeably different. Its size, the routes through it, and above all the density and variety of duty-free stores feel appreciably greater. Once I had completed departure formalities and gone inside, a shopping area on a scale I rarely saw in Terminal 3 opened out before me, and my footsteps naturally slowed. Rather than hurrying through, I felt this was a suitable place to look around little by little and let the end of the trip settle.

An Akihabara-themed shop: another Tokyo at the airport

The shop that especially caught my attention this time had an Akihabara theme. What struck me was that it seemed to condense a broad range of Japanese culture, rather than simply gathering character products in one place. Alongside nationally familiar characters such as Totoro and Doraemon were anime goods, small electronic accessories, and, unexpectedly, shirts for Japan's national football team. I could scarcely remember seeing that kind of football shirt in airport duty-free shops before, so I stopped for a closer look. It was another moment when the name Akihabara seemed to stand not merely for a character shop but for a wider world of Japanese popular subculture.

An unchanged face: Doraemon again

As I followed the displays, a strangely familiar character caught my eye. I remembered stopping here on the way home from my Tokyo trip of December 9–10, 2024, and buying a Doraemon item then. To my surprise, the same character was still being sold in the same place this time. Airport duty-free shops seem as though they ought to change constantly, but coming across something still there, unchanged, lets the times of different journeys connect naturally. The same place, a similar route, and a character still smiling: the personal memories accumulated through repeated trips were attaching themselves to this space.

A different way of travelling

There was a time when I bought armfuls of sweets and souvenirs at duty-free every time I returned from Japan and handed them out to people I knew. But now Japan feels so close, somewhere I can visit so often, that the impulse seems to have faded naturally. It can feel a little like fussing unnecessarily over other people; these days, if someone wants something, they can travel there themselves. This time I therefore concentrated on looking rather than searching for things I ought to buy. Walking slowly around the shelves felt more like taking time to recall, one by one, the places and scenes I had passed through on the journey.

The flight from Narita Airport Terminal 2 back to Incheon is always the stretch that makes the end of a trip feel real. Once departure formalities and duty-free browsing are behind me, only boarding and the journey home remain. I was flying Air Premia on this return leg. The whole process from check-in to departure control had been very smooth, giving the sense of a quiet ending without major surprises. Our boarding gate was 84.

To be honest, it was a very long way away. I walked and walked without seeming to reach the end, wondering more than once whether there could really still be more to go. Still, the airport's scale meant I could see a variety of aircraft moving around at close quarters along the way, which made it a little less tedious. As often happens on the final stretch of a journey, each of those views seemed to stay with me a little longer than it otherwise would.

Rain at Narita, a quiet ending

Before boarding, I looked out through the airport windows and saw that the ground was wet. It seemed rain had been falling. This was not a departure in bright sunshine, but strangely the view seemed to suit the ending of this trip: quiet and damp, neither boisterous nor excessively sentimental. My time in Tokyo was slowly settling into memory with the rain at Narita, and the journey was making its way quietly towards its end.

Whenever I fly Air Premia, I have much the same impression: an airline somewhere between a low-cost carrier and a full-service one. Each seat had a personal screen for films or entertainment programmes, and water and coffee were served during the flight. Earphones could be requested if needed, so there was little inconvenience even without making much preparation before boarding.

The peculiar ease of watching television in the air

On the return flight, I passed the time with the Korean reality programme I Live Alone on the screen. Normally I would not have deliberately set aside time to watch it, but on a plane I find myself paying closer attention. Being able to give all my attention to a single programme when there are few other choices feels like a curious advantage of flying. As I watched, the flight passed more quickly than I had expected.

Back to everyday life: a Tokyo journey ends at Incheon

When the aircraft landed on the runway at Incheon, the view beyond the window was wet beneath a cloudy sky. I could not tell clearly whether it was raining, but the gleaming surface made it seem as though rain had only just passed. If my final image of Japan had been rain at Narita Airport, the air that met me on arriving in Korea felt quietly subdued.

After completing arrival procedures and coming out through the arrivals gate, I felt the tension accumulated over the trip begin to ease at last. The awareness of being back in everyday life arrived very slowly. There had been tight moments in the schedule on this Tokyo trip; I had walked more than expected and followed plenty of unplanned routes. We moved around the concert, changed neighbourhoods in search of goods, and linked familiar places with spaces we were seeing for the first time.

Nothing spectacular had happened, but some scenes remained all the clearer for that. Walking out across the wet ground at Incheon Airport, I quietly put it together in my mind. This trip had been good too. More than good, really. And that degree of lingering feeling was enough to make me start planning another.

By the time I arrive at Incheon Airport, most trips already feel finished. There is the familiar sequence of passing immigration, collecting luggage and taking the airport railway home. Incheon had always carried a strong association with the end of a journey. In fact, despite coming and going through it countless times, I had rarely given myself room to discover anything new there. It was usually early in the morning or late at night, and at those hours the airport served only as somewhere to move through.

On this trip, our arrival time happened to fall in between. It felt a little early to head straight home, but I had no plan to remain at the airport for long either. That gave me a little space to turn towards somewhere I would normally have walked past: the Visit Korean Heritage Campaign's promotional centre. Located below ground in the Transportation Center at Incheon Airport Terminal 1, it turned out to be much more of a place for travellers than I expected.

The Visit Korean Heritage Campaign centre goes beyond the idea of an ordinary tourist information desk. It serves as an official starting point for the Visitor's Passport tour: collect a visitor's passport there, and you can continue travelling along heritage routes spread throughout Korea. In other words, another journey can begin in the very airport through which you are passing.

Given the character of an airport, that arrangement felt meaningful. A traveller returning from overseas could naturally turn their attention towards a new journey through Korea's heritage. I liked that the centre did more than tell people that these places existed in Korea; it offered an action they could actually take. The passport format is familiar to travellers, too, making the idea intuitive without having to read a long explanation.

A small exhibition built around participation

The centre contained more than its size might suggest. First I noticed a concierge area providing information on heritage travel. There were materials covering not only heritage routes in particular regions but also ways to visit them and possible sequences, useful enough to feed directly into an actual travel plan.

Rather than a collection of promotional leaflets, the arrangement deserved the name of a travellers' centre. One side had a screening space where visitors could watch content about Korean heritage. The films were short enough to fit a brief stop, but helped put into context the cultural sites one might otherwise pass in transit. There was also a photo zone combining the theme of heritage with the airport setting.

What interested me most was the digital experience area. It used game-like content in which you controlled a drone to view heritage sites. I liked that it offered the experience of operating something yourself instead of ending with simply looking at a display. It was brief, but accessible enough for both children and adults to try without much preparation, which made it seem well suited to time spent waiting at an airport.

Three stamps for the final scene of the journey

The central experience at the Visit Korean Heritage Campaign centre was, of course, stamping the visitor's passport. By following the experiences through the centre, I could collect a total of three stamps. What interested me was that these did more than provide a souvenir: they seemed to help gather the shape of the journey.

Returning from overseas and stamping a passport for future travel within Korea carried a curious symbolism of its own. This particular trip had given me a strong sense of coming back, so the stamping felt like a small closing ritual. It was a memory of a different kind from the photographs I had taken or souvenirs I had bought. There was a physical record left behind, but also an opening towards the next journey.

After collecting the stamps, I could take part in a short survey and receive a small souvenir on completing it. What I received that day was a travel toiletry bag. It was a modest item, but its practical use on future trips made it unexpectedly satisfying. These small rewards also seemed to help leave a positive memory of the place.

Incheon Airport had always been so familiar to me that I had scarcely thought of looking at it closely. I usually passed through under pressure from a schedule, or moved quickly because I was tired, without time to take in my surroundings. Arriving at this in-between hour let me see another face of the airport, one I had missed before.

The character of my November 2025 Tokyo trip was clear from the start. Kanou Miyu's birthday concert was scheduled for November 6, and I headed back to Tokyo with that performance at its centre. Yet this felt less like simply another visit to Japan and more like a chance to gather the course of a year's journeys and catch my breath. Looking back, I had travelled to and from Japan almost every month since November 2024.

Concerts, short promotional performances, events, fan meetings: following each date had quietly filled a year with a dense succession of experiences. In a sense, this Tokyo trip was a terminus at which to put that year of continuous movement into order. It differed from the earlier journeys in that I had chosen it as a chance to pause, rather than because I needed to keep going further.

Four days and three nights, each with its own texture

Each day of this trip had a distinct character. The first was clear: Kanou Miyu's birthday concert stood at its centre. The train from Nippori to Shibuya, the time waiting outside clubasia, and the feeling left after the performance made the day seem more like one sustained event than a day of travel. On the second day the atmosphere changed.

Following places associated with Chainsaw Man and continuing as far as Tokyo Dome felt like a journey in which to let the concert's afterglow settle. Walking through real spaces I knew from an animated setting gave my feelings a slightly different direction. The third day was the most like an ordinary day of travelling.

We moved around Tokyo in search of Chainsaw Man goods, and the process itself became a mission. At the end of the day, visiting Irugi Shrine and leaving a wish in an onegai usagi, a wishing rabbit, allowed me to bring the trip quietly into order. I had not planned it that way, but it became a scene that brought the whole journey towards its close.

Staying in Nippori, and the satisfaction of the route

Choosing Nippori as our base proved satisfying too. It was unglamorous, modest and down to earth, and above all convenient for transport. The JR Yamanote Line made it easy to reach the main areas, and boarding the Skyliner was straightforward as well. Of course there was a small issue on the last day, but it did not become a major problem. Travel rarely unfolds exactly according to plan; a variable of that size felt more like something that made the experience real.

The travel expenses

The major expenses I recorded for this trip were 346,800 won for the Air Premia flights and 159,000 won for three nights in an Airbnb in Nippori. Three of us shared the accommodation, and 159,000 won was my own share. Two Skyliner tickets cost 42,400 won, or 21,200 won each. The four-day eSIM I bought from USIMSA provided 3 GB a day before continuing at a reduced speed, and cost 5,880 won.

My S-ticket for Kanou Miyu's birthday concert actually came to 9,240 yen including fees. I did not combine expenses in different currencies into a single figure. Nor had I recorded every meal, shopping purchase and local transport fare in Tokyo, so I left these figures as notes on the larger costs at the time rather than a complete balance sheet. I bought the flights relatively late, so in absolute terms I could not call them exceptionally cheap.

I did, however, use a five-percent discount coupon received when I first registered on Air Premia's website, which brought the price lower than it had initially felt. Given the dates and flight times, it was an amount I could accept. Taking the Boeing 787-9's personal screens and basic drinks service into account as well, I was quite satisfied with what I had received for the price. I also booked the accommodation close to departure, and felt it was a good choice considering that.

Nippori itself is not a major sightseeing centre, but movement on the JR Yamanote Line was convenient, and the modest neighbourhood atmosphere around the accommodation suited the rhythm of the latter part of the trip. For a place found at short notice, the space, location and routes were all reasonable for the price. Given that three people were sharing it, I was sufficiently pleased with its value. The Skyliner price felt different from an earlier journey.

I remembered previously buying one ticket for around 19,700 won; this time it was 21,200 won. I could not tell whether that was due to the exchange rate or a difference in the selling price. The amount alone was slightly disappointing, but the quick, comfortable journey between Narita Airport and the city still made it an acceptable choice. It was less a heavy burden than the mild regret of finding that something familiar had gone up in price.

Looking through the costs one by one, I felt that this had still been a relatively inexpensive trip overall. Naturally, the figure would rise if I added every fare and meal in Tokyo, but I considered those to be expenses that could just as easily arise in ordinary life in Seoul. Once again, I did not make a separate detailed calculation of them. If the cost of travel is partly a question of how richly I experience my time compared with everyday life, rather than simply how much extra I spend, this trip had given me plenty of scenes and memories for what it cost.

Pausing, so the journey can continue

This Tokyo trip felt less like a spectacular finale than a comma at which to catch my breath. It was a time to put the flow of a year's visits to Japan into order, leave a record and slow down for a while. Perhaps that was why, on the way home, calm lingered more strongly than regret. I had not yet decided when I would head to Tokyo again. What I did know was that this trip was not an ending, but a way of putting things in place for the next chapter. That was how my November 2025 Tokyo journey came to a close: quietly, and with a feeling of steadiness.