Tokyo Worst Five Date Spots
If I had a thousand yen for every free paper out there, I think I could almost make the taxi fare to Narita airport. These giveaway magazines showcasing restaurants and massage parlours (of the kind ones mother might go to, not the kind you find down Manchester Street or in Shin-Okubo) can be found all over Tokyo in places like railway stations and supermarkets. We got another one in our letterbox yesterday – this one was called Gyutto (Japanese only) and covered our local Azabu / Tamachi area.
While I am not really that interested in getting a sunbed tan, or yet another Asian-fusion-noodle-barbecued-meat-and-sushi restaurant with stylish decour and soft mood lighting, I was interested to read an article about differences in love between guys and gals in Japan. They asked 50 men and women a range of questions about what they looked for in the opposite sex, what sort of language they liked and didn’t like as well as their favourite foods.
They had a listing for the places they dont want to go on a date:
For Japanese Women, the worst places were:
1. Akihabara
2. Shopping
3. Horse Racing
4. Pachinko (Horizontal pinball like gambling)
5. Manga Cafes
with chain pubs, haunted places and forests also listed.
The places Japanese guys most don’t want to go on dates to were:![]()
1. Tokyo Disneyland
2. Shopping
3. Shibuya
4. The womans parents’ house
5. Sanrio Puroland (Kitty Chan theme park)
as well as Matsuya Department Store in Ginza and other places, dessert buffets and mountain climbing.
So there you go – it is perfectly safe to take your date to a strip club. Or even better – train spotting!

Last weekend we were going book shopping in Yaesu, near Tokyo Station when we stumbled upon the Pilot Pen Museum. There are so many little museums scattered around Tokyo that it can be fun to see what finds when out for a wander. The Pilot Pen Station is a Museum and Cafe with a neat display of writing implements – both produced by Pilot as well as outlining the development of writing instruments through out the ages.





Tokyo has an image of being one of the most expensive cities in the world, a city where spending ten thousand dollars on an evening entertaining clients, where everyone sports their Louis Vuitton status symbols as if they are truly unique. But of course being a city of 24 million people things are a little more diverse than that reputation would have you believe.