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want to meet at fmd_good Wildlife Reserve
want to meet at fmd_good Market Deli
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Weathering With You gets slept on for this. the Tokyo in it is a city that's constantly raining and half underwater, and the shots of the flooded Yamanote line and the abandoned rooftops around Ikebukuro feel weirdly accurate for a place that floods every typhoon season. Makoto Shinkai basically animated a love letter to the shitty 2LDK apartments and convenience store parking lots most of us actually live in. also the scene at the old Yoyogi Kaikan before they tore it down hits different if you ever walked past it
tokyo godfathers is the one for me. it gets the shitamachi side right, the old downtown around asakusa & kuramae where people actually live, not just the neon postcard version. the homeless characters camping along the sumida near the bridges feel way more real than any expat bar scene
Ozu's Tokyo Story gets cited so often that people forget Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Nagaya shinshiroku, 1947), which he shot in the burnt-out ruins of shitamachi right after the war. The whole film wanders around a vanished Tokyo of black markets and cramped row houses, and the kid who goes missing in Asakusa feels like a document more than a story. If you want the city before the neon, not the postcard version everyone quotes, that one's harder to find but worth the hunt.
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Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.