Shin-Ōkubo walk 新大久保

With its large Korean population and countless Korean cafés, restaurants, takeaways, supermarkets, and souvenir shops, Shin-Ōkubo in Tokyo is often referred to as Korean Town, although it is probably the most racially diverse place in the whole of Japan, with an additional sprinkling of African supermarkets, Turkish kebab shops, Indian curry houses, and more besides.

But apart from being able to shop for exotic ingredients and the stimulation of exploring somewhere that’s a world away from small-town Ibaraki, the reason the Muzuhashi family has stayed in Shin-Ōkubo so often – almost always on trips to Tokyo – is the Hanabi Hotel, which is one of the very few affordable hotels anywhere near the city centre that has tatami mat rooms. These, we discovered quite some time ago, are the easiest and perhaps only truly viable option for families with small children, as there’s no danger of babies and toddlers falling off their beds in the middle of the night, and much less space is required to accommodate a family of four on futons than on two, three, or four actual beds – futons that can be folded away during the day to make eating, watching TV, and so on feel a little less claustrophobic.

Unfortunately, the last time we stayed at the Hanabi – mainly because I wanted to take the children to the Kidzania theme park, which I will hopefully find the time to write about in a separate blog post – my snoring was so loud that both they and Mrs M were kept awake for most of the night.

Since then, both in Japan and on our last visit to the UK, I have booked two separate rooms in business hotels, but on the occasion these photos were taken, I awoke early and thoroughly refreshed, and ventured out for a walk while the rest of my family tried to grab an hour or so of undisturbed sleep.

So these photos were taken at about 6 a.m. in beautiful sunrise light and with hardly anyone around to bother me (Shin-Ōkubo is normally thronged with people and for Japan, surprisingly strewn with rubbish, too).