When I first landed in Tokyo earlier this year, I thought I had a decent idea of what to expect. This was, after all, not my first time coming to Japan. I first visited Japan in 2022, with my wife and daughter (no son yet at that time!) for a couple of weeks of vacation. Admittedly, back then, we only stayed in Ginza area and only visited the touristy parts. So I had a biased imagination of what Tokyo would look and sound like.
The years after that visit, I had read books, watched videos, scrolled through clips of crowded crossings and neon signs, learning things about Japan. I had lived almost a decade in Europe, navigated the Kafkaesque French bureaucracy, walked through the snow-covered Luxembourgish winters, and commuted in trains that creatively scheduled.
So when I finally moved to Japan–well, specifically, to Tokyo–earlier this year, I thought: How surprising can Tokyo really be?
Turns out: very.
Looking back now, after months of going back and forth between home and work, bringing kids to park and school, taking trains, getting lost in neighbourhoods, getting lost in the neighbourhoods thanks to Google Maps (honestly at certain point I almost gave up on Google Maps for navigating Tokyo), and doing very ordinary things in this city, there are three things that still surprise me about Tokyo every now and then.
In no particular order, they are:
- There are so many trees, parks, green spaces.
- There are so many bicycles.
- Earthquakes are normal.
1. So many trees, parks, green spaces
If you had asked me years ago to imagine Tokyo, I would have drawn you a picture of a concrete jungle: glass towers, elevated highways, glowing billboards, trains weaving between buildings. People crossing streets in large mass, subways weaving underground railways like blood flowing in the vein. High speed trains departing and arriving big stations. Cars, buses, trucks on the streets.
And all of these images were kind of reflected back then when I visited Tokyo the first time. It was difficult to navigate, too many people (tourists) on the streets. Dense, busy, loud.
The reality: I found an apartment not far from Shinjuku. The center’s center of Tokyo. At a first glance, from the streets, it was like what I imagined: tall apartment buildings standing tight one after another. But then, I step out of my apartment, walking through the back streets, and within one minute of walking, I’m under a canopy of trees.
These green spaces were many. Surprisingly, very surprisingly, very abundant and welcoming and looking like they are well maintained. If not green spaces, we’d found, every now and then a small neighbourhood park, with a slide, a sandbox, a couple of benches, and trees that somehow manage to grow tall between apartment blocks. Other days it’s a long, narrow green strip along a river, or a wider park with walking paths, a pond, and people’s laughter carried by the wind.
And what’s even better is that all those green spaces and parks are reachable. Within a 30-minute walking distance, there are so many. Days and weekends are spent park-hunting. “Which park are we going to today?” becomes a daily question with the kids. Are we going to that park near the railway so my son can see the trains passing by? (Kids love trains!) Or to the one a bit further, with slides on the hill?
And it’s not only the parks. It’s the trees tucked into corners: in front of convenience stores, beside vending machines, in the middle of small parking lots. Trees growing out of tiny squares of soil cut into the pavement near a very busy intersection. Potted plants in front of houses, creating mini-jungles in narrow residential streets.
On my way to work in the morning, I pass by streetside cherry trees. I have seen them naked in winter, drenched in rain, blooming in spring, thousands of petals falling with the breeze, blazing green in summer, and gently turning yellow losing their leaves in autumn.
It all feels… intentional.
As if the city itself decided that, no matter how hard and dense things get, we are going to make space for green.
And every time I realise this, I’m reminded how much I had underestimated the importance of being able to step into a park on a weekday afternoon, let my children run and play, and just sit there, watching the light filter through leaves.
2. So many bicycles
Before moving here, I knew that bicycles existed in Tokyo. People mentioned “mamachari”—those city bikes with child seats in the front and back—and I thought, Ah yes, like in Europe. Lots of bikes. I know this game.
I did not know this game.
Where we used to live, cycling gradually became a form of self-defence for me. Trains were late, buses were replaced, or worse, disappeared from the schedule, leaving me waiting for almost an hour under zero degrees weather. Walking home in the cold was definitely undesirable.
So we bought bicycles and scooters out of necessity. It felt like an individual hack against a society that didn’t really care.
Here, bicycles feel like they are part of the system.
In the mornings, I often walk alongside a slow-moving parade of people on bicycle. Salarymen, salarywomen, parents on electric bicycles, children strapped safely in the seats, colourful helmets on. So many bicycles that I feel like they could put Amsterdam to shame. They move quietly through narrow residential streets, stopping at traffic lights, waiting patiently, and then continuing on.
And it’s not just the quantity. It’s the normality.
Many sidewalks have painted markings where bicycles can roll. Streets got markings on where bicycles should be. People go to the supermarket, the park, the station, the clinic, the city office–bicycles everywhere. Some are simple, some are electric, some carry one child, some carry two. I’ve seen a parent calmly cycling with a child in the front seat sleeping, head gently rocking, completely at peace. Train stations have multi-level bicycle parking areas. In front of supermarkets and drugstores, rows of bicycles are neatly parked.
And yes, I also bought bicycles. Two of them, in fact–a mamachari and a normal electric one–one for my wife or me to use for taking the kids to school or to the park to play; another for me to take to the office. I mentioned above how oftentimes we spend weekends park-hunting, and sometimes we go to parks that are a bit further from home, and we simply go there with the bicycles. Practical, easy. And the kids seem to love it!
3. Earthquakes are normal
This one, I think, is something that many people who live in Japan or grew up here will probably shrug at. Of course there are earthquakes. It’s Japan. Everybody knows that.
I also knew that. I have imagined and prepared for it. But knowing that a country has earthquakes and actually living with them are two very different things.
The first time I felt it, it was late in the evening. I was already at home. The kids were already sleeping. I and my wife were still awake. I was coding a bit, finishing some stuff for work. Suddenly I feel myself shaking left and right. I was surprised–my first instinct was thinking to myself huh? What’s wrong with me? Am I going to die like in one of those stories where a guy was overworked lack of sleep and finally–
Then I and my wife realized that everything was shaking. Clothes in the hangers, our table, coat racks, everything. It was an earthquake. A rather big one too.
We jumped. Instinctively we kinda started thinking worst case scenario. Rushing to the bedroom to take the children and take cover. But then, no sooner than it started, it stopped.
I was… very confused.
There was no warning. No alarm. No one of those alerts on the phones like what we’ve heard or seen in the movies or some other stories. It was just an evening, and the earth was shaking that bad, and then suddenly everything went back to silence.
I checked outside. Did people go outside to escape? No, everything was quiet. Streets went normally. People still walking on the sidewalk. It was as if nothing had happened. We even checked some earthquake tracker websites to make sure we weren’t hallucinating things. Surely enough, we can see the record of the earthquake just literally happened in Tokyo.
And that’s it.
Two, or three, more earthquakes happened already ever since I moved here. Or maybe four? There were nights where I thought the floor was shaking, and that woke me up, but when I checked the earthquake tracker nothing showed up, though on SNS sometimes people started reporting themselves feeling it too. And whenever I asked people at work, or neighbours about it, they’d just say “Ah I didn’t feel it”, or “Oh I was asleep!” or even “It’s usual here, nothing to worry about.”
Little by little, my reaction changed too. The first time, my heart was racing and my brain went straight to worst case scenarios. Now, when a shake happens, I still pay attention, I still get a bit alert—but there’s also this voice in my head going, “Okay, let’s just wait and see first.” I check on the kids, I glance at the shelves, I make sure nothing is about to fall, and then, if it calms down, we go back to whatever we were doing.
I don’t think I will ever reach the point where I can completely shrug earthquakes off like some people here seemingly can. And I don’t think I should. But I am slowly learning that, for many people in Tokyo, earthquakes are not a special event. They are just… well… one more thing among many that you live with. People have adapted and prepared a lot. Buildings were built with earthquakes in mind. Places have been set to be gathering point if ever it got bad. It’s like having special tires to prepare for driving in snowstorm or watertight raincoat to go through the rain. We can’t fight hurricane but we can think and prepare for it.
 |
|---|
| Metropolitan building from Chuo Park |
Looking back at these three things—green spaces, bicycles, earthquakes–they may sound simple.
No futuristic gadget, no giant robot, no life-changing technology.
But when you stack them up, day after day, they form the background of a life that feels very different from what I was used to.
Being able to bring my kids to a park almost any day of the week and let them run. Knowing that I can depend on a bicycle to go places, and that there will probably be a spot to park it. Living with the knowledge that the ground may shake again, but also that the people around me–and the systems around us–have rehearsed what to do.
They don’t solve everything. There are still handicaps, still bureaucracies, still difficult days. I still get lost, I still fumble my Japanese, I still stand in front of certain forms thinking, What on earth does these kanji even mean?
But in between those moments, there are trees, there are bicycles, and there is a city that has learned, over and over again, how to stand back up even after the literal earth has shaken it again and again.
And somehow, that makes it much easier to keep moving forward.