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Y'all have lots of old dudes on bikes drinking alcohol while riding?
The legal loophole is that bicycles are classified as "light vehicles" under Japanese traffic law, but the drunk driving penalties only explicitly target cars and motorcycles. So technically you can get a ticket for cycling drunk, but it's rarely enforced unless you cause an accident. I've seen cops in Ueno just watch a guy weaving through the park with a can of Strong Zero in his hand and do nothing about it. It's one of those unspoken allowances for the elderly, like how nobody says anything when they cut in line at the post office.
it's a whole thing, legally speaking bikes are technically supposed to follow the same road rules as cars but no one enforces it. you see them outside combini in shitamachi neighborhoods like senju or kawaguchi just sitting on their mamacharis sipping a chu-hi at 10am. i think the cops just don't want to deal with the paperwork for something that usually ends with the guy wobbling home slower than walking speed
yeah it's kinda wild honestly. police just don't care about bikes, even if they're swerving all over the place. i think it's just one of those things where everyone looks the other way since it's usually just old guys going slow
Whitebox in Tokyo 2026: Is It Still Worth It?
yeah the old Whitebox spot got gutted around then, last I walked past it was a startup office on the upper floors. kuramae's decent but honestly Kiyosumi-Shirakawa side is quieter and the rents are still half of Shibuya. miyamasuzaka is basically all towers now.
kuramae's rents crept up too since the tawaman went in, kiyosumi side is still the better bet
agreed on kiyosumi being calmer, but the tawaman effect in kuramae is mostly along the edo-dori side. walk 5 min toward kotobashi & rents drop again. still cheaper than miyamasuzaka either way
whitebox actually closed back in 2018, the space is a gallery-slash-coworking thing now. shibuya's still fine to live in but the rents near miyamasuzaka have jumped hard, more office towers than studios these days. if you want that old creative vibe try kuramae or kiyosumi instead