Okay, to be fair, I'm definitely talking about big downtown areas exactly like Shinjuku or Shibuya. But I'm also talking about places like すき家 and 松屋 which are pretty good late night drunk eats and we never failed to find a late night pub with crazy hours no matter where we were.
I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
The late night pubs do exist, sure, but a lot of them stay open to capture any foot traffic from people missing their last train around midnight. Most don't serve full menus at that hour and it's usually a skeleton staff (short of, say, a HUB or something... but those aren't going to be open past 2, short of Roppongi & co generally).
Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake. After the power issues around the country, I noticed a lot of places never returned to their same livelihood. It's a shame, was fun while it lasted.
I'm mostly commenting at this point because the misconception of Japan being this constantly-on always-good-food crazy ass heaven is really tiring to see these days.
"Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake."
Really? This surprises me, given that the population of Tokyo has only continued to rise since then, and Tokyo wasn't nearly as badly affected as many other parts of Japan. How long did the power issues last following the earthquake, and why would they still continue to have effects so many years later?
The effects of the Lehman shock and 3/11 disaster hit the middle class hard, the blame is pointed at millennials for being thrifty (Why aren't young people buying luxury cars? Why do young people buy everything second hand?), but the reality is that middle class Japanese have less disposable income than 10,20, and especially 30 years ago
Japanese GDP now is ~$500B less than it was in 1995. [1] A country can't experience 25 years of economic stagnation as a whole and magically generate a large cohort of young people with money to throw around.
Things are a little better in purchasing power per capita terms [2], but not by enough to make a difference.
Changing economic conditions definitely makes a lot more sense to me. And activities in the middle of the night tend to be more expensive anyway (just think about bars and clubs), so you can save plenty of money by just going to bed and walking around for free the next day in the sunlight to hang out with your friends.
Like a bunch of other people in this thread, apparently, I was also in Japan about a month ago.
From what I saw, the whole place looked middle-class, and like everyone was doing fine. I think I might have seen one homeless person the whole time I was there (and I'm not sure about that; they were just begging, and didn't have a bunch of stuff with them); I saw more poverty in Germany, and I see far more in the US.
Japan's middle class might not have as much disposable income as it did in the 1980s, but from what I saw, it wasn't doing badly at all. It certainly looks a lot healthier than the US's middle class.
The other commenter in this thread did a good job explaining what happened re: economics, but a nitpick: just because I noted the power issues as a timeline reference doesn't mean I said it was why things went away.
> I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
Regularly see elders in my local Yoshinoya. The Beef-Salmon set is good.
The OP isn’t being literal, but the point is correct: Yoshinoya seems great if you’re a tourist and you’ve had it once or twice in your life. But if you live there you begin to associate it with missed trains and late-night binge drinking. I had to be pretty wasted to eat gyuudon - even an old onigiri from a sketchy conbini was preferable.
Are there people who eat there regularly? Sure. There are people who eat Burger King every day, too.
The OP’s broader point about Tokyo not being a magical 24/7 wonderland is extremely well-taken. Tourists spend some
time in Shibuya or Shinjuku and extrapolate incorrectly. Hell...even Shinjuku can be a hard place to get a good bite at 3am on a weekday night. Most places there close shortly after the last train (~midnight).
