This article by Adriana Mazza first appeared on Tokyo Cheapo.

New Toyosu Fish Market | Photo ©Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market

You’ve probably heard by now that the iconic Tsukiji Fish Market will cease operations later this year, and reopen as the Toyosu Fish Market. Here are the top tidbits regarding the relocation of this historic and cultural landmark.

When one market closes, another opens only slightly farther east… you know that old saying.

The Tsukiji Market is slated to close it doors on November 2nd, 2016, which means time is running out for those keen on seeing the live tuna auction and experiencing the market in it’s historic state. It’s unclear whether the auction will be open to visitors at the new site, so make your way to Tsukiji while you still can. Check out the Tokyo Cheapo guide for opening hours, closures and what to expect.

The new Toyosu Market is set to open on November 7th, 2016 on a bigger and better lot in Tokyo’s Koto ward — about 2 miles (3.4 km) east of the market’s current location.

Relocation costs a lot of clams. (Ha… clams… fish market… you get it?)

The expected cost of transplanting the market from Tsukiji to Toyosu is ¥392.6 billion (approx. $3.76 billion USD).

Allocation breakdown

Construction: ¥99 billion/$948 million USD (Fun fact: the new market will be fitted with solar panels and a green rooftop.)

Soil contamination clean-up measures: ¥58.6 billion/$561 million USD

Infrastructure (including road planning, maintenance and a highway overpass): 37 billion yen/$354 million USD

Land costs: ¥198 billion/$1.9 billion USD

Wait, go back — what’s that about soil contamination?!

The Toyosu site was formerly owned by Tokyo Gas Co., and after a survey conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it’s been confirmed that the soil is heavily contaminated. According to the official Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market site, Tokyo Gas Co. has agreed to shell out ¥78 billion ($747 million USD) for clean-up efforts. There’s been much concern — especially from the side of business operators — about food safety at the relocation site.

What will happen to Tsukiji Market?

The Tsukiji Market is closing for a few reasons: its facilities are old and the current layout inefficient—which the government says is hurting the market’s “image”, in addition to causing health and food safety concerns. Another big reason (and most likely the main reason) is that the Tsukiji Market is currently sitting on prime real estate. There’s word that the site will operate as a temporary bus terminal during the 2020 Olympics, and then be redeveloped into a sports stadium and retail shops. More on that at Japan Property Central. Keep in mind, though, that no official redevelopment plans have been confirmed, but we’ll keep you posted once more information is released.

Read more and see a map on Tokyo Cheapo

This week, a major Studio Ghibli retrospective exhibition opens in Roppongi Hills, covering all of the studio’s 22 anime feature films.

The Ghibli Expo runs July 7th to September 11th, and includes sketches, previously unseen materials, posters, and even a recreation of what inside Studio Ghibli looks like.

There’s nothing “trendy” about the exhibition per se, but the event also includes a special pop-up cafe with a Ghibli-themed menu.

As we have been reporting, these tie-up cafes are now a major thing in Tokyo. A recent example was the Mamoru Hosoda anime cafe in Shibuya, while others have included Sesame Street, Miffy, Rilakkuma and Sailor Moon.

One of the highlights from the cafe menu is the “black burger” (¥1,380), whose color is meant to represent the Susuwatari “soot sprites” featured in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.

Perhaps more conventionally appetizing is the Laputa Bread (¥1,080), which is toast, egg and meatball soup. Naturally, it’s inspired by a moment from Castle in the Sky Laputa.

There is also this Green Tea Umbrella Shaved Ice for ¥750, which references the umbrella in the famous bus stop scene from My Neighbor Totoro.

Among the other desserts, there is also a parfait for ¥1,280, themed around sea, land, sky and the heavens — all of which feature heavily in the various Ghibli anime films.

To visit the cafe, a ticket to the exhibition is required. Admission costs ¥1,800 for adults.

Earlier this year, we wrote about fashion guru Hiroshi Fujiwara’s new project, The Park-In Ginza, a unique retail concept space located in the parking lot underneath the soon-to-be demolished Sony Building in Ginza.

Not satisfied with its bold use of space and geography, The Park-In Ginza is also branching out into the art world with an exhibition of in-demand photographer Mika Ninagawa’s work.

The first art event to be hosted by the space, “Light of” is at The Park-In Ginza from July 22nd to August 16th. It is themed around festivals and fireworks, which are iconic images of the Japanese summer.

In addition to photographs, visitors can also purchase special t-shirts, iPhone cases, tote bags, and more. The first zine created by the artist will also be on display.

Ninagawa’s signature use of floral motifs and vibrant color makes her a good choice for transforming spaces, as she did for Shiseido with a public bathhouse in February.

The iconic Sony Building will be torn down in March 2017 and make way for a temporary park, after which a new tower will rise in 2022. The merciless march of urban development in Tokyo continues, though at least these kinds of events and pop-ups make it more tolerable.

Last week we reported on the growing bookstore boom in Tokyo that has seen Book and Bed, a bookshop-hotel, become such a hit that its customized pajamas sell out in minutes.

Book and Bed Tokyo opened in Ikebukuro in November last year, riding on a book-themed accommodation trend started by the bookstore chain Junkudo in 2014.

It has proved a success, including with overseas tourists. Now comes news that Book and Bed is to open a new branch in Kyoto, another literary city. Like with the Ikebukuro branch, guests will sleep among the tomes on bunks built into specially adapted bookshelves.

Details are slim at the time of writing but it is announced that Book and Bed Kyoto opens this autumn. Once again it will be designed by Suppose Design Office (Makoto Tanijiri and Ai Yoshida) and with art direction by Soda design. We assume that the book selections will be handled as before by Shibuya Publishing & Booksellers.

Films have a habit of attracting strange marketing stunts, though this is quite an incongruous one indeed.

Godzilla and whisky?

Yes, Japan is the land of Godzilla and also the land of great whisky, as the overseas acclaim for Suntory can attest.

To commemorate the release of the new Japanese Godzilla movie on July 25th, two new Scotch whiskies are being launched by liquor store Shinanoya.

Shin Godzilla (New Godzilla) and Godzilla boast a 6- and 24-year age respectively, as well as the dubious honor of being “exclusively chosen by Shinanoya for Godzilla” — as if the kaiju wanted a drink in the first place. They go on sale from August 5th at Shinanoya in Shinjuku, priced ¥13,800 and ¥22,800. Shin Godzilla is a single malt Talisker whisky while the blended malt, older Godzilla is advertised as a Hector Mcbeth beverage.

A launch ceremony is being held at Speyside, Jiyugaoka, on July 17th. We wonder if the big beast will be there in person?

Directed by Hideaki Anno, Godzilla Resurgence stars Satomi Ishihara, Yutaka Takenouchi and Hiroki Hasegawa, and is the first domestically produced Godzilla film since 2004. The franchise was rebooted by the successful American movie in 2014. The new release has spawned several interesting items of merchandise so far, such as this Godzilla money box.

Godzilla is also set to burst out of Shibuya Parco before the department store closes later this year, as well as smash into Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. Who says movie marketing needs to be subtle?

To celebrate the 100 years since the Dada art movement launched in Europe, a series of commemorative events is happening around Tokyo this summer.

Dada, or Dadaism, was an anti-art movement started in 1916 by Tristan Tzara and his peers, spreading across Europe in an attempt to celebrate anarchic and new forms of art such as collage and montage, nonsense, readymades and more.

Though Dada was a European movement, its influence on Japan has been relatively significant, perhaps most obviously in the eponymous alien adversary in the Ultraman franchise. The first major avant-garde art movement in Japan, MAVO, also developed in the 1920s partly out of Dada and Futurism.

The events in the Dada 100 Festival involve a wide range of venues and institutions, including Spiral in Aoyama, Waseda University, and Goethe-Institut Tokyo.

It is natural that Tokyo, which from 1923 onward had its own highly inventive Dada movement, MAVO, will be on the map of world capitals celebrating the legacy and influence of Dadaism. Tokyo will mark this anniversary in the spirit of Dada: open to all creative minds and with the goal of encouraging their thoughts to change direction. The Dadaists were the first to incorporate chance into their artistic creations, which parallels how the Dada festival came together — through spontaneous connections and accidental encounters. Multiple art institutions have taken the gamble to propose unconventional events that will challenge the audience’s preconceptions.

The Roppongi music and art space SuperDeluxe is hosting the “centerpiece” of the festival: a series of Cabaret Voltaire events this week, named after the Zurich nightclub where Dada was founded. “Art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to feel the atmosphere of the birthplace of Dadaism in a uniquely transformed space with groundbreaking performances of dance, music and poetry.”

Other highlights include at Spiral (Wacoal Art Center), where there is a series of exhibits from August 4th to August 28th inspired by the anarchic energy of the avant-garde spirit of the original movement.

At the offbeat art space The Container, an exhibition by the Swiss artist Nadja Solari runs from July 18th to October 3rd that references Dadaist Sound Poetry.

Nadja Solari’s exhibition … is a spatial mixed-media installation, constructing a connection between the contemporary digital-age bot-generated spam emails and Sound Poetry. Inspired by the subject lines of such emails, which are often a comical neologism that tries to outsmart the spam filtering programmes to avoid interception, is akin to Sound Poetry, and used as the backbone of this exhibition. During this process these subject lines and emails defunct semantic meaning and create a new language, random and chaotic, reminiscent of the Dadaists’ writings — the generated poetry of our current digital and virtual realities. The result is similar to early 20th century poetry that many Dadaists generated through manual techniques, such as Automatism and chance, currently, replaced by digitally automated systems.

The exhibition at The Container is a loose conglomerate of everyday objects, each with a different kind of circuit/stream/flow, or a repeated mechanism, to raise issues relating to the boundaries between the private and public. The objects are adorned with over-sized heart-shaped gingerbread biscuits, bearing bot-generated spam messages lifted from actual spam emails. The iconography is deeply influenced by advertising, consumerism, slogans, and catchphrases we habitually encounter in our everyday lives, with a dose of associations taken from fairytales’ symbolism and allegory.

Asakusa, a small art space in east Tokyo, will engage with Dada in a more socially conscious way through an exhibition called “Radical Democracy” featuring the work of two artists.

Using materials such as tinfoil, Xerox copies, adhesive tape, and cardboard, Thomas Hirschhorn gives form to cultural critique and composes questions about consumerism, media spectacle, aesthetic value and moral responsibility…. Marked by sensations of unease and discomfort, Santiago Sierra’s work captures body politics exhumed by the conditions of market capitalism.

The exhibition is organized with help from Sanya Labor Welfare Hall Action Committee.

The overall events continue until the end of September, when a selection of screenings at Goethe Institut Tokyo will close the festival.

The timing of the festival is also somewhat apt. Following the recent victory of Shinzo Abe’s LDP in the House of Councillors election last year, cementing the regime of the conservative government possibly set on changing the Constitution, many disillusioned liberals and art fans in Japan will surely welcome a dose of anarchy in Tokyo.

A muscular male “performance team” will bring their brawny charms to Tokyo for the first time this summer. ALLOUT will open a special “muscles cafe” in a venue on Omotesando on July 30th. All 230 tickets quickly sold out, so ALLOUT added an extra date on August 27th.

At Muscle Cafe Tokyo, women can try various “original omotenashi” services such as being picked up “like a princess” or even the kabe-don treatment, where a strapping man will plant his hand on the wall behind you to trap you in a kiss-me-now position.

Tickets cost ¥4,500 or ¥6,500 for a VIP seat. Diners get a free drink plus some tickets to use for the “omotenashi” options, each of which carries a different fee.

In Japan, the men have hostess clubs, girls’ bars, maid cafes, and even now local branches of Hooters. What about the girls? Sure, there have been host clubs and butler cafes for a while, but these kinds of “muscular” services and events for women are now a growing trend in Tokyo.

Earlier this year we reported about the Macho Craft Beer Bar, neatly dovetailing the craft beer boom with a “hunky pub” concept.

Later this month, Tokyo’s first “naked restaurant”, The Amrita, is also set to open, featuring scantily clad male hosts. It has drawn ire for having age and weight restrictions, but promises to be such a hit that the organizers are already planning three new branches in Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya.

The Macho Bus Tour was also held earlier this year, offering women passengers a ride with sinewy chaps on board.

We also previously spotted the Ikemeso Danshi “hunks”, who go around Japanese offices helping stressed office ladies cry and relieve their work stress.

Going back further, there is also the Macho Cafe, which is kind of like Hooters in reverse. It was so successful it generated a spin-off meat restaurant.

A new photography exhibition showcases sexual diversity in Japan.

“Out in Japan: 1,000 Portraits” opened at Spiral in Minami-Aoyama on July 12th, featuring portraits taken by Leslie Kee, a Singaporean photographer with a major presence in Japan (and who was once arrested for exhibiting nude photos of men). People who posed for Kee include politicians, teachers, celebrities, artists, and more.

Since it launched in 2015 with a series of portraits of cast members from the musical Rent, the project has been crowdfunded but also sponsored by a range of corporations and brands such as Shiseido and GAP. Kee travelled all over Japan and has held nine shoots so far.

The exhibition is part of an overall project to collect 10,000 portraits of LGBT in Japan by the year 2020.

Out in Japan is a project aimed at shining the spotlight on sexual minorities in Japan — with various acclaimed photographers taking portraits of LGBT — identified individuals from all walks of life, with the goal of showcasing 10,000 portraits in the next five years.

The growing public awareness of LGBT in Japan has been boosted by the success of the annual Tokyo Pride event as well as high-profile couples, and the decision of Shibuya, Setagaya and other local governments to offer de facto official recognition of same-sex partnerships from 2015.

That being said, there is no discussion on the national government level about LGBT rights, let alone same-sex marriage. While the recent shocking events in Orlando are surely never going to happen in Japan, that is not to say that LGBT do not face discrimination and ignorance in their lives. Transgender and gay people are essentially confined to a subculture, which infiltrates the mainstream in terms of the presence of cross-dressing in many walks of life — but is still rarely addressed head-on.

“Out in Japan: 1,000 Portraits” runs until July 18th. Admission is free.

Mercedes-Benz has opened a virtual showroom in central Tokyo. Potential car-buyers visiting the new space inside Daikanyama’s T-Site, an upmarket bookstore by Tsutaya, do not get to experience the “new car” smell typical of an automobile showroom. Instead, they use virtual reality headsets to explore the interiors and exteriors of car models.

The lounge-style space is located adjacent to the snazzy bookstore area, since Mercedes-Benz is hoping to entice hip visitors to T-Site who might not otherwise take an interest in owning a car in central Tokyo. While it may offer a glimpse into how we may buy cars in the near future, this isn’t a fully VR showroom just yet. It is staffed with Mercedes-Benz employees and, if you want to test-drive a car, there are also demonstration vehicles in the parking lot.

In the face of declining domestic sales across the industry, luxury cars with deeper pockets than ordinary automotive manufacturers have pursued novels ways to market their products to consumers in Tokyo. This includes opening third spaces like Intersect by Lexus in Aoyama or Mercedes-Benz Connection in Roppongi. These sites have facilities to eat and drink as well as for hosting music and other events that often have no direct connection to the brands’ fleet of automobiles. Mercedes-Benz, which also sponsors Art Fair Tokyo, opened a branded space in Haneda Airport last year. Audi had a similar venue, Audi Forum Tokyo, though it shut down in February after 10 years.

The choice of T-Site is also not so surprising, since it was conceived as more than just a bookstore but a hub for different lifestyle experiences. In addition, bookstores in Japan are increasingly more than just places to flog books to readers. They are also hotels, event spaces, galleries, and more.

This summer, Tokyo is going mad for ninja (again).

“The Ninja: Who Were They?” is an exhibition at Miraikan, a science museum in Tokyo, until October 10th.

While ninjas might seem a better suited to a history museum, the innovative show lets children (and older visitors) practice their skills as assassins through various physical and digital exhibits. Ever wanted to imitate the famous “nanba-aruki” walk? Learn about it from a scientific perspective and see how it reduces exhaustion. Somewhat like getting a tutoring session at the Boy Scouts, visitors test their senses and acquire techniques in navigation.

Needless to say, there are lots of exhibits of ninja weapons, tools and clothes. You can even try your hand at throwing a (non-lethal) shuriken or walking silently across a wooden floor.

The Miraikan website also proudly notes that “all visitors who attend this exhibition will receive the Ninja Certificate issued by the Japan Ninja Council”.

As Japan experiences an unprecedented tourism boom and looks to boost this even more for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it is shamelessly exploiting these tropes.

The ninja was once a dark and rather unpleasant historical figure, but has since become mythologized and romanticized today, or even integrated into pop culture through countless representations in movies and animation. The clickbait belies the true history of ninja, who were assassins without the honor associated with the samurai class. But who cares about reality when your movie takes home the box-office bacon or your museum brings in tourist yen? There is even a “ninja temple” in Kanazawa with absolutely no connection to genuine ninja history except that the architectural features have “stealth” defenses.

Aichi Prefecture recently hired a squad of professional “ninja ambassadors” to attract tourists to the region. The recruits include a foreigner, 29-year-old American Chris O’Neill who has impressive acrobatic skills, though we worry if his appearance might have made him stand out too much to have been a real ninja back in the day.

Places like Iga in Mie and Koga in Shiga prefectures have benefitted from the ninja boom over the past years. These areas claim credit for creating the original schools of ninjutsu, or the art of stealth. Cue museums and other tourist traps aplenty.

Clearly interest from overseas is insatiable. Earlier this month and unrelated to the Miraikan exhibition, The Guardian featured an article about Masaaki Hatsumi, who is 84 years old and “one of Japan’s few living ninja”.

A Where’s Wally? Wally Run will take place in October, bringing together thousands of Wally (aka Waldo) cosplayers.

Applications are currently being accepted for the two “runs” in Osaka on October 2nd and Aichi on October 15th.

Similar to events held in other countries, the idea is to bring together as many people as possible dressed up in Wally’s signature outfit of red and white striped clothes, matching hat, and black-rimmed glasses.

Where’s Wally? (known as Where’s Waldo? in North America) is popular in Japan, where the series is known as Waarii o sagase!. Being the home of cosplay, Japanese people are also very keen to dress up as characters like Wally/Waldo.

Previous Wally costume parades have been held in Ginza last year. Another Wally Run in Tokyo in May attracted 6,000 people. Wally/Waldo costumes are also popular for cosplayer revellers to wear in and around central Tokyo during Halloween and Christmas, when it has now become customary for young people to dress up and hang out in areas like Shibuya. Wally cosplay is especially popular for girls, though whether they like to dress as Wally’s friends Wenda or Wilma, or Wally himself is not always clear.

Although organizers are hoping to attract 6,000 people to Osaka and 4,000 to the Aichi event, they will be spread over several “runs”. Entry costs up to ¥7,500 for adults, though there are discounts for younger participants and early applicants, and you are provided with a costume.

The Where’s Wally? Wally Run events will also have real-life versions of the famous items you search for in the books, such as Waldo’s camera and magnifying glass.

Is this the most original way to stay cool this year? Quite possibly.

New from Thanko, Japan’s at times strangest creator of chindogu (everyday gadgets), the Electric Armpit Clip-on Cooler Fan is your new way to ward off perspiration.

It was released a few weeks ago but has been receiving quite a lot of online buzz and overseas media interest. And we can see why. Like all chindogu, it initially appears somewhat wacky or useless, yet cannot be discarded as simply a joke. It genuinely works and, if you don’t mind how you look while using it, you will be very grateful to the breeze it provides.

All you need to do is clip the unit to the sleeve of a short-sleeve shirt and turn it on. The cooling wind will be blown directly into your armpit, which should help to combat those sweat marks that are an inevitable feature of the humid Japanese summer.

Get two if you want to keep both armpits cool, and the unit can also be clipped to the front of a shirt if you want to cool down your chest area.

Now comes our burning question: has everyone seen these being used in the wild?

The Nintendo game character Kirby now has its own pop-up cafe and official store.

Kirby Café and store opens August to September in Osaka, with a concurrent store opening in Nagoya’s Parco department store. The cafe is also set to open in Tokyo at Tokyo Skytree Solamachi at an unannounced later date.

Kirby is something of a retro character whose video game incarnations are the stuff of the 1990s, but he continues to inspire new games and toys. This year a new Nintendo 3DS game was released, selling 300,000 copies. In 2017, Kirby also celebrates its 25th anniversary, so expect more tie-ups and releases.

Naturally, the Kirby Café has an exclusive Kirby-themed menu of food and drink, inspired by the Kirby game characters and items.

Not to mention branded merchandise like bags, badges, and cushions.

The explosion of these themed cafes has become of the big marketing trends of the past two or three years. Every month there seems to be a new pop-up dedicated to yet another franchise, attracting fans through a special menu and limited-edition merchandise.

From Puyopuyo!! Quest to Rilakkuma and Pokémon, it seems you are not a respectable franchise unless you have your own pop-up at least once.

This isn’t just homegrown franchises and brands like Sanrio, Sailor Moon, or Ghibli. We have also seen overseas character franchises such as Peanuts, Sesame Street, and Miffy get in on the act, too.

Courier company Yamato Transport has teamed up with DeNA to launch a self-driving car delivery service from March 2017.

The driverless automobiles are branded with the distinctive black cat logo of Yamato, whose green cars, carts, or bicycles are one of the most common sites around Tokyo.

The service is called RoboNeko (“robot cat”), which is a further reference to the Yamato icon. Customers will place an order via a dedicated app and then track their shipment as it is transported by a driverless vehicle. RoboNeko will start as a trial service for a year in special zones.

When the unmanned car arrives, customers opens the back door themselves and remove their package from a storage box. For the trial run, a driver will ride in some of the cars to monitor its performance and ensure there are no problems, but when the service is launched in the future in full all vehicles will be left to the robots to handle.

Following the new drone delivery service launched by Rakuten and Amazon, as well as existing services such as Rakuten’s locker pickup for packages, we have seen couriers and delivery services evolve a lot in recent years. The courier infrastructure is already among the best and most reliable in the world, as long-term residents will attest, allowing you to send and even collect parcels from convenience stores.

DeNA is also set to launch a driverless bus service in Chiba next month while self-driving taxis are currently being tested in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, with the goal of having a Robot Taxi service ready for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

As one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, Japan is regarded as an ideal place for testing and implementing self-driving vehicles. Older drivers are also responsible for a significant increase in the number of traffic accidents, which has led car makers to introduce a range of new safety features and technology in vehicles.

The top 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games sponsors have joined together to support the Japan team heading to Rio with a special branded Yamanote Line train.

Sponsored by 15 companies, the 11-carriage train will operate from August 1st until September 15th featuring a flooring in the style of running tracks inside.

It seems that the carriages will have different designs and sponsors.

The initially released photos are pretty poor quality but we hope to upload with better images soon.

The design recalls the visually striking one for the new Narita Airport LCC terminal that opened last year.

Such branded trains are common forms of marketing, whether it is buying up all the advertising space inside the carriages, or even paying for the outside of the train to be specially decorated for a limited time. The Yamanote Line, which functions like a loop line in central Tokyo, is one of the most used and visible train lines in the capital and as such has serious marketing value.

Previously memorable uses of the Yamanote Line also include holding a wedding party inside a moving chartered train.

The rise, rise and rise of Blue Bottle continues. After its much-hyped arrival in chicly run-down Kiyosumi-Shirakawa in 2014, it swiftly went more metropolitan with branches in Aoyama and Shinjuku.

Now its expansion rolls on with three new branches: Roppongi in September, Nakameguro in October, and Shinagawa later in autumn.

It is clearly hedging its bets with different kinds of districts. Roppongi has been gentrified in the last few years by Mori Building Company and now has plenty of sites hoping to attract moneyed clienteles, not least a tony outlet of Tsutaya with a Starbucks inside. Shinagawa is a newly developed business district, while Nakameguro is a central yet local-feeling community with more than its fair share of hipster-y eateries and drinkeries.

　
The Roppongi cafe will open in Tri-Seven Roppongi, a “striking new landmark” opposite Tokyo Midtown. The Nakameguro space will include areas for workshops and training, a gimmick that feels right up the demographic’s line. The Shinagawa coffee shop will be on the third floor of Food & Time Isetan, a curiously named branch of the department store.

The key question is: Will all this result in third-wave coffee overload? The major selling point about third-wave coffee shops were their novelty and the supposedly better quality experience offered, in addition to a kind of exoticism from being mostly foreign-derived. However, the more third-wave coffee shops that appear, the more ordinary and familiar they become, and the market may well become saturated. After all, the numbers of people willing to pay more and wait longer for a cup of joe in Japan, even in Tokyo, are not infinite.

And yet, we should keep in mind that Starbucks is now the largest coffee chain in Japan in terms of market share (over 40% in 2013), proving that even when your whole schtick is offering a pricier, better product than your competitors, it needn’t it caps your expansion. And Doutor, which long had an easy ride in the market by dint of being dirt cheap and not much else, has picked up its game to counter the foreign upstarts like Starbucks, which recently celebrated 20 years in Japan, and Tully’s. As a result, Doutor has attempted to rebrand itself, perhaps not wholly successfully. It has also been priced out by the convenience stores, most chains of which now offer very cheap coffee and even lattes to go or even drink in, since some stores have seating areas.

The second wave has been forced to adapt to survive and so will the third wave.

Pocchari (larger size) culture just got another stamp of mainstream approval.

While Japan is readily associated with slim and willowy female fashion, beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. As such, it is a very welcome development that the career of plus-sized Naomi Watanabe is currently being celebrated with an interactive exhibition.

“Naomi’s Party” runs from July 30th to August 6th at Laforet Harajuku. The event features eight sections: Party Room, Sweet Room, Make Room, Shower Room, Dance Hall, Laundry Room, Photo Room, and Game Room.

The exhibition is inspired by Naomi Watanabe’s Instagram account, where she shares her snaps of favorite foods. Other parts of the show include recreations of the costumes and items used in TV commercials Watanabe has appeared in. Visitors can also watch the process of Watanabe applying her make-over on a screen in the shape of a mirror. The Shower Room section apparently allows visitors to “make Naomi naked”: it doesn’t involve actual stripping, but introduces the answers to questions put to other celebrities and industry people about Watanabe.

Visitors can also re-enact a Watanabe TV commercial for instant noodles and take their own photos, as well as take part in a “free style battle” with Watanabe or play games.

Tickets cost ¥800 on the door. After the Tokyo leg is over, the exhibition tours around the country until mid-November, taking in Kyoto, Kobe, Miyagi Prefecture, and more.

Known for her outrageous Beyoncé Knowles impressions, Watanabe has led Japan’s recent “larger lady” boom, resulting in a specialist fashion magazine, online shop, fashion show, and even a related spin-off magazine for larger men.

Images via FashionSnap

One of the biggest stories of 2015 was the opening of the “robot hotel”, Henn na Hotel, in Sasebo, where guests are served by artificial staff.

The “Strange Hotel”, as its name literally means, promised “a commitment for [sic] evolution”. The gimmicky hotel received a lot of press attention in Japan and overseas, but it has proved to have staying power beyond its wacky concept. Certainly, the likes of Pepper in SoftBank stores and other places has also contributed to the ordinariness of seeing robots in Japan today.

The Henn na Hotel is now expanding. The first branch opened in Huis Ten Bosch amusement park in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, in July last year, but a new hotel is coming to Tokyo Disney Resort in March 2017.

The hotel will be an 18-minute walk from JR Maihama, which is the station passengers alight at to enter Disneyland or DisneySea. As such, the hotel is well located to catch overseas tourists, too, since Disney Resort is a prime destination for Asian visitors to Japan.

The new hotel will feature 100 rooms. As in the Sasebo branch, guests will be checked in by a dinosaur robot and android. Guest rooms are assigned automatically, which also helps lower the actual number of workers required behind the scenes. We might call this android neoliberalism: robots are not just a gimmick to attract guests, but can also reduce overall labour costs.

Here is how the operators bill the Sasebo hotel:

Excitement meets comfort. Introducing state-of-the-art technologies, Henn na Hotel is the world-first hotel staffed by robots.

At the front desk, you will be greeted by multi-lingual robots that will help you check in or check out. At the cloakroom, the robotic arm will store your luggage for you, and the porter robots will carry them to your room (only available in A Wing). Mechanic yet somehow human, those fun moments with the robots will warm your heart. Furthermore, once you register your face with our face recognition system, you will be free from the hassle of carrying the room key around or worrying about losing it.

One of the definitions of the Japanese word “Henn” is “to change”, which represents our commitment for evolution in striving for the extraordinary sensation and comfort that lies beyond the ordinary.

Staying at Henn na Hotel is filled with unexpected and delightful surprises. The unique experience will take our guests one step into the future.

Additionally, two more hotels are planned for, respectively, Aichi Prefecture in summer next year and near Universal Studies in Osaka by the end of 2017.

The Aichi branch will be inside Lagunasia, a theme park in the city of Gamagori operated by major travel agency H.I.S., Huis Ten Bosch’s parent company.

“The hotels are sure to be a big success, as they will be installed near outstanding theme parks,” said Huis Ten Bosch President Hideo Sawada.

It goes without saying that the location of these hotels in resorts and theme parks highlights the novelty of them, and we think it will be quite some time before we see regular business hotels or the like manned by machines.

It’s the end of an era as Donbareya, the cup noodle restaurant on one of the platforms for the Yamanote Line at JR Shibuya Station, has closed.

Offering Donbei instant noodles for hungry commuters, Donbareya shut its doors on July 31st after about six years of operation.

Its passage into history is part of the massive four-part redevelopment of Shibuya that will see the Tokyu and JR stations transformed. The redevelopment is set to be finished by 2027, though the first part will be completed by 2018 in time for the Olympics.

The JR East section of the development will see the Yamanote Line become an island platform, whereas now the platforms are separated. The Saikyo Line will be shifted nearer the Yamanote Line, unlike now where it is located a considerable walk away.

Tokyu is building a 47-story tower on top of the Tokyu Toyoko Line platforms. The old Toyoko Line moved underground in 2013 — try to transfer from the Keio Inokashira Line to the new Toyoko Line and learn this the hard way — and the former terminal will morph into yet another new building.

Alongside Shibuya Hikarie, the four main facilities surrounding the station will turn the district into a cleaner development similar to Marunouchi or Shinagawa. The effects this will have on the charming chaos of Center Gai and the retail hub of Shibuya are yet to be seen.

The success of Donbareya, despite offering just hot water and instant noodles, can be put down to the lasting, universal appeal of cup noodles in Japan, which are eaten by everyone from salarymen to students. It opened in time to ride the so-called “B-kyu gourmet” boom, which celebrated cheap and “subpar” dishes.

In addition to the usual food and drink kiosks, the Yamanote Line platforms at Shibuya have previously hosted other pop-ups and promos, including a curious “real estate cafe” a few years ago. Train passengers could go in and get a cheap cup of coffee while browsing information on housing. We hope that the newly reborn Yamanote platforms continue to experiment with these kinds of spaces.

The creative unit teamLab is already making a big splash this summer with its incredible digital flowers installation in Odaiba.

If that’s not enough for you, you could also catch teamLab’s exhibition at Omotesando Gyre from August 9th to September 25th. Entry to “teamLab: Transcending Boundaries” is free of charge.

The exhibition looks stunning and includes Flowers on People, a new digital installation where flowers petals disperse in response to the movements of the viewer. There are two other exhibits featuring butterflies and more. The exhibits are created by computer programming in real time as opposed to being pre-programmed in advance.