The thrill of boredom? Where not even the Chinese tourists tread in? The neighborhood. Where people live, small shopping streets, sometimes real small. With the strong tendency to live indoors, small streets in the cities are eery, that is, extremely tranquil, or put into unconventional, repellent jargon: boring. That is, until you stop applying to reality the fancy of your fancies about Japan. Boredom is allover the places, everywhere in Japan or elsewhere. Understanding the dynamics of boredom in thy common neighborhood is a sure fix to that very feeling. I never feel bored in Tokyo, especially where there is nothing to "see" or to "do", in the Lonely Planet meaning of those verbs. A huge majority of the Tokyo area, like any other cities in the world, does not generate any blip on the standard tourist criteria screen.
The other day, we leisurely walked the trail from Edogawabashi via Zoshigaya to noisy Ikebukuro, then moved a little by subway back to noiseless neighborhoods close by Kohinata, around the Tokyo university botanical garden, the lovely Hakusan hill, to end up at (noisy) Ueno. The best kept secrets of Tokyo are the gazillions of sleepy neighborhoods where you have glimpses - faint because again, they don't live outside - of daily life. My walkers customers usually very much enjoy the tours à local supermarkets (in addition to the must see department stores luscious food spaces). With the coming Autumn - wait for another month and a half, or if you can be patient, wait until November - walking in Tokyo will turn more pleasurable that ever, in those neighborhoods garden cities like.
