Twentythree

Littering in Shibuya will get you a fine that must be paid on the spot.

Last Monday wasn’t just the start of June, it was the start of a new littering fine in Tokyo. As of June 1, if officials spot someone throwing trash on the ground in some of the city’s most heavily touristed areas, they can issue a citation with a penalty of 2,000 yen (US$13).

This new rule is enforceable in Shibuya, and not only around Shibuya Station, the famous Shibuya Scramble intersection, Hachiko dog statue plaza, and Center-gai shopping/restaurant street. The littering ban is for all of Shibuya Ward, which also includes the neighborhoods of Harajuku, Ebisu, and Yoyogi, among others. As a result, that littering is now a finable offense on the trendy and high-end fashion meccas of Takeshita Street and Omotesando and the pedestrian approach to Meiji Shrine too. Moreover, the law states that the fine is enforceable on both public and private property within Shibuya Ward, and while leaving an empty candy wrapper at your friend’s apartment isn’t going to get you in trouble with the law, that aspect does mean that fines can be collected from those caught littering within shopping centers, train stations, and other such spaces.

▼ Takeshita Street

To enforce the littering ban, Shibuya Ward has a team of approximately 50 roving inspectors. It’s unclear whether they’ll be a permanent dedicated anti-littering squad or if watching out for litterbugs is one of multiple public safety/order duties they perform while in the field, but the Shibuya administration does say it will have anti-litter inspectors in action 24 hours a day.

Unlike Japan’s recently introduced bicycle safety infractions, fines for littering in Shibuya Ward will be collected on the spot by the inspector. This aspect of the system may have been put in place to address perceptions that a disproportionate amount of litter in the area comes from foreign tourists, and to prevent them from being able to leave the country while still having unpaid fines. Payment can be made in cash or through cashless methods such as credit cards.

In addition, Shibuya Ward has also begun requiring convenience stores, takeout food/beverage sellers, and vending machine operators to provide trash receptacles, with fines of 50,000 yen for non-compliance. In a Shibuya Ward study conducted in 2025, 97 percent of inspected fast food restaurants and 80 percent of cafes were found to already have trash cans available, but those numbers dropped to 50 percent for food trucks and 47 percent for take-out beverage sellers.

However, the aim of the trash receptacle requirement is for food/beverage sellers to contribute to the proper handling of trash generated by their business operations, which could complicate finding a place to throw away your specific type of trash. For example, vending machine trash receptacles in Japan tend to be exclusively for recyclables of the materials used in the containers of the drinks that the machine sells, so if you’ve got, say, a paper bag from Krispy Kreme, the vending machine trash can isn’t going to help you. Likewise, with most Japanese people not being big on eating/drinking while walking, trash can capacity is likely to be relative to the amount of customers that particular place itself expects to have, so if you roll up to a drink stand with a family meal’s worth of fast-food containers from someplace else, they might not be able to accommodate you. Because of that, it’s probably still a good idea to be prepared to hang onto any trash you generate while in Shibuya until you get back home or to your hotel, since the ward is clearly looking to keep its streets cleaner.

Source: Shibuya Ward, Mainichi Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko, Tokyo MX
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso
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We strap on our shoes and head into downtown Tokyo for a philosophical conversation prompt and a walk with a whole bunch of people we’ve never met before.

Japan is right in a special sweet spot right now weather-wise, where the chill of winter and allergy-triggering pollen of spring are gone, but the sweltering heat of summer hasn’t arrived just yet. That makes the conditions ideal for a nice walk with friends…or, as we experienced in downtown Tokyo, a nice walk with complete strangers.

This unusual opportunity came to us thanks to Taiwamura Walking Club (or Taiwamura Sampo-bu, as they’re called in Japanese), an organization that puts together group walks by setting a time, meeting place, course, and a lightly philosophical topic to discuss as you stroll. For the session we joined, the group met at 10 a.m. outside Ueno Station, with an equal mix of men and women. There was a wide range of ages too, with the youngest being a 19-year-old college student and the oldest members old enough to be her parents.

Taiwamura Walking Club usually limits the number of participants to 10 people or so, and after everyone arrived, the session started with a quick round of self-introductions. Then we were off and walking, with the Taiwamura Walking Club representative leading the way.

As mentioned above, every walk that Taiwamura Walking Club organizes has a conversational theme (taiwa is Japanese for “discussion,” after all). This isn’t a debate club, though, so the topics aren’t contentious or requiring of specialized knowledge. Instead, they’re relatable conversation prompts, and the one for our walk was “Why does loafing around the house make people feel guilty?”

As we soon learned, the combination of walking and talking is surprisingly clever. Because you’re on the move, there isn’t any of the pressure to keep up a constant stream of chatter like you might feel sitting down face-to-face at tables in a cafe or standing near somebody at a party. Walking the route that Taiwamura Walking Club prepares gives everyone a shared goal that helps keep occasional silences and pauses from feeling awkward, but the goal is simple enough that it doesn’t demand 100-percent of your concentration either, giving participants ample leftover mental capacity to talk with one another.

Again, because this isn’t a controlled debate, the conversations were very free-form. The official topic is really just a jumping-off point, and as we chatted with the other strangers-turned-companions, our conversation meandered into all sorts of other topics, whether work, other hobbies and interests, or daily life, before coming back to “Why does loafing around the house make people feel guilty?” and then flowing into yet other non-pre-planned topics.

Because of that, we didn’t arrive at any indisputable consensus answer to Taiwamura Walking Club’s question of the day, nor was that ever the hoped-for outcome in the first place. The group did land on a couple of plausible explanations for what causes feelings of guilt after being lazy at home, such as:
● It makes you aware of how much time you’ve spent looking at social media and watching online videos without any sense of purpose.
● It’s a passive, rather than creative, way to spend time.
● If you keep on loafing around until it gets to be late at night, you won’t get enough sleep and you’ll feel exhausted the next day.

In total, we spent about an hour walking, and in addition to a feeling of accomplishment at having gotten in some extra steps, we felt mentally refreshed after having had the opportunity to talk to so many new people in such a relaxed, communication-conducive environment.

We found Taiwamura Walking Club among the listings on Peatix, an online event and community activity platform that helps organizers connect with participants, and Taiwa also spreads the word about its walks on Kokucheese, another site with a similar purpose. Our walk came with a participation cost of 500 yen (US$3.25), but Taiwa has organized free walks too, and their mobile icebreaker sessions seem like a great way to meet new people in a low-stress, highly fun way.

Related: Peatrix, Kokucheese, Taiwamura Walking Club on Kokucheese
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Animals & Monsters: Cute, Scary, and a Little Weird is the perfect exhibition for anyone who delights in art that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

This summer, once you’re done shopping in the trendy streets of Tokyo’s Harajuku district, you won’t have to go far to enjoy a little taste of high culture. In fact, there’s some conveniently located right in front of Tokyo Metro Meiji-Jingumae Station and just around the corner from JR Harajuku Station at the Ota Memorial Museum of Art, a preeminent museum of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and drawings. However, this repository is offering a fun twist in its upcoming exhibition that might leave you laughing in the gallery.

From June 23-August 23, the Animals & Monsters: Cute, Scary, and a Little Weird exhibition will have 140 works on display, approximately one-fifth of which are new to the museum’s collection. The event will also be split into two parts that will display entirely different works of art during each.

So what makes it “cute, scary, and a little weird,” you ask? It’s the fact that even master artisans from 200 years ago weren’t afraid to be a little bit silly with their craft. Take this print that’s part of Yoshikazu Utagawa’s Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido series, for instance. At first glance, it appears to show some people being startled at a potato with a tail and legs (for the record, it’s actually a stone tiger–which still leaves us with lots of questions).

▼ “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road: Oiso” by Yoshikazu Utagawa

If anthropomorphized animals are more your thing, you’ll enjoy the series of cat-humans (human-cats?) going about daily life in a variety of settings such as at a public bathhouse. This print would make for an excellent addition to your bathroom with the ability to potentially disturb your guests.

▼ “Cats’ Bathhouse” by unknown artist

Meanwhile, these cats seem to have rented a property with a bunch of their Japanese yokai friends and are throwing an all-night rager.

▼ “Cats’ Blowdart Stand” by Yoshifuji Utagawa

On the cuter side of things, there are plenty of prints of animals engaging in all kinds of antics. Take this fox that seems to be wearing the latest in cabbage couture and practicing the choreography to “Thriller.”

▼ “Dancing Fox” by Koson Ohara

Moving into the realm of the bizarre, don’t be weirded out by this chimera of all 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac that’s supposed to bring good luck to the household. Good luck in getting people to give a name to this guy, that is…

(Hey, at least it doesn’t look like it’s about to say, “Ed…ward…”)

▼ “Twelve Animal Signs of Oriental Zodiac Gathering to Form One Animal” by Yoshitora Utagawa

Finally, the jury’s still out on whether the below image is bizarre versus downright scary, but we’ll let you decide for yourselves. In all honesty, though, hopefully the museum will be selling merch with this print so that we can commemorate our visit to the real-life pond in Japan where human-faced fish are supposed to live with one.

▼ “Goldfish Resembling Kabuki Actors” by Yoshiiku Ochiai

Admission to the Ota Museum of Art is by cash only, at 1,200 yen (US$7.53) for adults and 800 yen for university and high school students. Junior high school students and younger enter for free, though you’ll have to be the judge of whether any kids you take with you will find the artwork to be hysterical or terrifying.

Come to think of it, our team of writers will have to take a field trip to see the exhibition when it opens. They’ll fit right in with all of the strange antics being depicted.

Exhibition information
Animals & Monsters: Cute, Scary, and a Little Weird / アニマル＆モンスター  かわいい・怖い・ちょっと変
Ota Memorial Museum of Art / 太田記念美術館
Address: Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Jingumae 1-10-10
東京都渋谷区神宮前 1-10-10
Duration: June 23-August 23 (Part I: June 23-July 20, Part II: July 25-August 23)
Open: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. (last entry at 5 p.m.)
Closed: June 29, July 6, July 13, July 21-24, July 27, August 3, August 10, August 17
Website

Source, images: Ota Memorial Museum of Art press release
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With the couples on either side of him as hot as the flames on his grill, our solo-dining yakiniku fan finds a mental escape.

Dining at a yakiniku restaurant in Japan quickly becomes a series of choices to make. Yakiniku menus consist primarily of a wide variety of different types and cuts of meat that you grill yourself, but per-plate portions tend to be small, so you’ll need to make multiple orders to get enough food to fill yourself up.

If you’re ordering a la carte, different kinds of meat have different prices, but many yakiniku restaurants offer all-you-can-eat options that give you unlimited access to certain types, and when our Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro Wasai opted for such a deal on a recent yakiniku outing, you’d think he would have then just ordered based on what kinds of meat he thinks taste the best. Things got a little more complicated, though, after Yuichiro sat down.

At most yakiniku restaurants, the majority of the seats are at tables with space for two, four, or more diners. At some, though, you’ll also find counter seating, and since that was an option on this day, Yuichiro had grabbed a counter seat. However, shortly after that a couple on a date sat down at the counter to one side of him, and then soon after that, another couple sat down on the other side.

In other words, Yuichiro was now sandwiched between two couples, and while they weren’t having full-on make out sessions, both pairs were in clearly lovey-dovey moods, scooched up against each other with their arms around each other as they ate.

Yuichiro found himself feeling increasingly self-conscious as he sat in what was a small buffer zone between the two amorous pairs, but because he was by himself, he couldn’t just focus on any dinnertime conversation of his own, and with his counter seat facing a wall, he couldn’t stare out a window either. However, it was at this moment that he realized that even though he was by himself, he could call on two allies to help him escape his feelings of awkwardness. Who were those saviors?

Beef short ribs and pork belly.

As mentioned above, at yakiniku restaurants you cook your meat yourself at a grill set into your table or section of the counter. Different cuts take different amounts of time to cook, but beef short ribs (kalbi) and pork belly tend to be two of the quicker ones  to grill, which also means that they’ll burn more quickly than others. In other words, you’ve got to pay very close attention when cooking kalbi and pork belly, and the more Yuichiro was focused on his meat, the less he noticed the heat coming off of the couples on either side of him.

With kalbi and pork belly being fairly fatty cuts, they also produce a lot of drippings as they cook, which causes flames to flare up from the grill. Usually this is a startling, or at least annoying, part of the yakiniku cooking process, but Yuichiro welcomed the distraction. Sometimes the flames were so strong that he felt the need to put an ice cube on the grill to cool things down a bit, and again, he was happy to have a reason to concentrate on what was in front of him, rather than on his flanks.

Though they’re not the only dripping-intensive yakiniku menu items, in his experimentation Yuichiro found that kalbi and pork belly have the best combination of juicy drippings and quick cooking time, letting you keep your cooking tongs, chopsticks, and brain in near-constant activity. So even though the all-you-can-eat option he’d ordered allowed him to choose from a broader swatch of the menu, he kept up a heavy rotation of kalbi and pork belly for his entire meal, as they truly are the best choices for someone who feels self-conscious when surrounded by couples.

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Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh, Spy x Family, and more come to Uniqlo’s continuing celebration of a century of manga/anime hits.

Uniqlo is no stranger to the T-shirt collaboration game, having previously partnered with such major franchises as Pokémon and Tamagotchi. Their current partnership, though, gives them possibly their biggest pool of inspiration ever to pull from, thanks to the involvement of Shueisha.

As the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump and numerous other manga anthology magazines, Shueisha is one of Japan’s biggest manga companies, and also one of its oldest. 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of Shieusha’s founding, and part of the century-mark celebration is the ongoing Shueisha 100th Anniversary UT T-shirt line from Uniqlo. The first two batches of designs arrived in stores this past spring, but there are still plenty of great series to salute, and now Uniqlo has unveiled the third batch of Shueisha anniversary, featuring five series from the Jump manga family.

First up we have supernatural sword fighting saga Bleach.

Creator Tite Kubo is well known for his penchant for stark-contrast monochrome artwork, which translates to a pair of striking T-shirts featuring protagonist Ichigo and a host of other friends and adversaries from the series’ sprawling cast.

Moving on to lighter and brighter fare, Spy x Family shows up four times in Uniqlo’s Shueisha collab.

Precious and precocious Anya gets a lot of the attention here, with shirts showing her playing with psychic pet Bond, shooting a withering glance at stuck-up classmate Damian, or plopped in front of the TV, but the entire Forger family gets together on one of the designs, and there’s also a shirt featuring Yor with red hair.

▼ Backside of the Anya/Damian shirt

Switching back to a darker tone, we come to a quartet of Yu-Gi-Oh shirts, one of which is a double-sided design where Yugi poses dramatically with the Dark Magician on the front.

A different dual-sided design places the Millennium Puzzle on the chest with more monsters on the back…

…and a third is for fans of the Toon Summon Skull, or “Toon Demon” (トゥーンデーモン), as the entity is named in Japanese.

The final Yu-Gi-Oh shirt is the only one with artwork on just the front, perhaps because the designers realize that Blue-Eyes White Dragon would be a hard act to top.

Also part of the new round of Uniqlo Shueisha shirts is Black Clover, with a pair of designs.

Neither of them has artwork on the back, but in both cases you do get an embroidered clover on the sleeve.

And finally, there’s a shirt for fans of Mashle, also known as Mashle: Magic and Muscles, with main character Mash repeatedly intoning “I can use magic.”

All of the shirts will be priced at 1,990 yen (US$13) and available through Uniqlo’s online store here in August.

Source: Uniqlo
Top image: Uniqlo
Insert images: Uniqlo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
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Summer in Japan can be brutally hot, but thankfully, Thanko is here to help.

We’ve still got some time until the full force of the summer heat hits, but with the weather in Japan expected to get so hot that the government had to start deciding on new words to officially describe it, it’s already time to start thinking about countermeasures. And sure, those Studio Ghibli uchiwa paper fans are beautiful, but for those looking for heavier-duty heat relief, Japanese gadget maker Thanko has, as it so often does, an unusual offering ready for the task.

Thanko calls it the Cold Wind USB Spot Ice Fan, and it’s meant to provide you with a more effective blast of cold air than you’d get with a regular electric fan, but without the side-effect waste heat, costly installation, or high running costs of a conventional air conditioning unit.

The unit draws in air from near its base, sucks it up, and then blows it out the tube at the top. In between, it passes through an ice pack, cooling the air and then compressing it into the exit hose, so that it blows out with extra force, focusing the breeze exactly where you want it to, most likely directly on yourself.

The reusable ice pack comes pre-filled with a powdered freezing agent. Add water and freeze it, and it’ll last you for four hours of fan use.

It’s extremely rare for homes and apartments in Japan to have centralized heating/air conditioning systems, and instead you have to install a separate unit for each and every room you want coverage in. This often means that hallways, bathrooms, and spaces towards the center of the home end up with no air conditioning, and the Cold Wind USB Spot Ice Fan looks like a handy way to cool off those places where putting in a full AC unit would be impractical and/or expensive.

As for the USB part of the name, the device gets its power though a USB C port, and can be used either plugged into an AC adaptor or a mobile battery. The fan has three speed settings (high, medium, and low), and Thanko says that even though its efficient design means it uses only about one-fifth the electricity of a normal electric fan, it’ll still have you feeling three degrees Celsius (5.4 degree Fahrenheit) cooler.

The Cold Wind USB Spot Ice Fan is available through Thanko’s online store here, where it’s priced at 7,980 yen (US$51). And if you’re wondering if Thanko has weird and wonderful ways to keep you warm in the winter too, they sure do.

Source, images: PR Times
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