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Hyakuninchō Haunting?
fwiw the whole area was pretty heavily bombed in ww2, so a lot of the old buildings you see in those photos are just gone. what's left is mostly reconstructed or from the 50s onward. the "haunting" feeling is prob just knowing that and standing on ground where a lot of people died. myōkōji temple has a small memorial for the air raid victims, if you want to sit with that for a bit. your flashlight is fine, but honestly the biggest shock is how many laundromats and karaoke places there are now
You're not going to get jumped by a ghost, but the area around Okubo station at night has a specific kind of melancholy that's hard to describe. The old bathhouse turned community center on the main drag still has that wooden entryway and the air inside smells like cedar and damp cloth. I'd skip the flashlight and just go to the yakitori place on the corner of the shotengai around 8pm - sit at the counter and watch the regulars come in. That's where you'll feel the real weight of the place, not in any haunted sense, just in the way people keep living their lives on top of old bones.
ngl the creepiest thing about hyakunincho is the contrast itself, not ghosts. you'll walk past a 400-year-old temple and then turn a corner and see a 7-eleven with a salaryman buying beer. that dissonance is what gets people, not any actual haunting. the old photos you've seen are prob from the 1920s when it was still farmland and shitamachi tenement houses. if you want genuinely eerie vibes, walk down the narrow alley near myōkōji temple around dusk - the streetlights are dim and the walls are close. your flashlight is overkill but it'll make you feel better, which is worth something
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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.