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| Scene from Lost in Translation |
I was initially planning on writing a post on 'How to spend your idle time in Tokyo', but realized this post might be more useful for foreigners like me, or ones planning to move here.
Tokyo can be pretty lonely if you are a foreigner, and more so if you are an introvert. It's pretty much true anywhere, when you are moving to a new country. You have to build new social connections from scratch. When you were young, it was a lot easier. You constantly met new people in Schools, classes, clubs, lan gaming parties. As you grow older, it gets harder to meet people outside work.
However in addition, in Japan, the language and to some extent the unique culture, often makes it harder to meet and interact with new people. If you are outgoing and comfortable with meeting totally random strangers, you could start with having conversations with people in coffee shops, trains and bars. For the rest of us, it's quite a daunting task to step out of our comfort zones.
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| Another Tokyo scene from Lost in Translation |
Japan also has quite a few unique extended weekends, and planning a backpacking trip each time, out of Tokyo, gets frustrating. It gets even harder during long breaks like New Year and Golden Week holidays, when locals go home to meet their families. Which means, you'll end up with days of nothing interesting to do, if you don't know people around. But if you enjoy the quiet solitude, Tokyo has this incredible zen feeling, I have never experienced before. You feel truly invisible and free, walking amongst crowded cross streets, as if the world doesn't really care you existed.
All right, back to the post before my thoughts drift away. Here are few tips which I have found quite effective
