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To add your own top 10s, please send them to me by email.

John Davies' top 10 films

• Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
• Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
• Maborosi (Kore-eda)
• Tokyo Story (Ozu)
• New Tales of the Taira Clan (Mizoguchi)
• Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
• Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
• The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
• Ai no Corrida (Oshima)
• Kwaidan (Kobayashi)

Inspiring selection. I'm off to the video shop!

10 things you have to do in Japan

• Photo stickers
  Get sheets of tiny photo stickers to swap with every Japanese friend you gain.
  
  
• Karaoke
  Of course!
  
  
• Kotatsu
  Sit under a kotatsu (heated table with a duvet-like surround).
  
  
• Nabe
  Eat Nabe - it may be the food of sumo wrestlers', but I loved it.
  
  
• Supermarkets
  Visit the supermarket and gaze in wonderment at all the incomprehensible packages and unusual vegetables.
  
  
• Hiroshima
  Go to Hiroshima - not depressing as I had expected - rather a thoughtful and positive place.
  
  
• Kimono
  Try on a kimono (I tried on my sister-in-law's) just to experience how regal you can feel.
  
  
• Schools
  Go to a Japanese school for the day - a pleasant culture shock after English schools).
  
  
• Hello Kitty
  Collect Hello Kitty items with fervour!
  
  
• Shrines and temples
  Try and visit quieter shrines or temples to get a sense of the peace that exists when they aren't full of day trippers.

Many thanks to Laura Bradshaw for these top tips.

Tim & Denise's Chiba top 5

• Nokogiriyama
  Possibly the highlight of Chiba prefecture is Nokogiriyama. It is quite beautiful- there are hundreds of little Buddahs scattered around the mountain and the top (via a ropeway) provides a fantastic view over Tokyo Bay and down the coastline (I think I might even have spotted Fuji somewhere in the distance). The highlight, of course, is the stone Buddah which is the biggest stone Buddah in Japan and, well, its pretty big and worth a visit. It's about 2hrs from Tokyo.
  
  
• Choshi
  With its delightful array of wild dolphins, locally produced sembe and world-renowned soy sauce, this tiny fishing town, the most easterly point of the island, makes for an encapsulating weekend retreat.
  
  
• Inbanumba bike trail
  This inspiring 40km bike trail takes the cyclist from the high-rises of Makuhari through the beautiful countryside of Chiba to the picturesque and historical town of Sakura, where, in the spring, you can enjoy the prefecture's only tulip festival (and the National History Museum all year round).
  
  
• Fuka Fuka Tei
  Award winning miso ramen. The name says it all.
  
  
• Mobara Tanabata Festival
  The only tanabata festival in the prefecture, its excessively gaudy decorations offset the colourful nature of this genki country town.

Many thanks to Tim & Denise for valiantly putting Chiba on the map. They promise more as soon as they can sort through the huge pile of equally exciting possibilities. :)

Niwatori's typical Tokyo sights (I've lost count!)

• Shimo-Kitazawa (abbr. Shimokita)
  This is a small and very nice shopping and amusement district formed around a train station in northeastern Setagaya-ku. By day, it can look like a miniature of Harajuku or Shibuya, but by night, it's much nicer.
  
  
• Elections (senkyo)
  For about 10-20 days, sound trucks never stop calling out candidates' names loudly from morning to evening. Those voice staff are called "warbler ladies" (uguisu jô).
  
  
• Matsumoto Kiyoshi (abbr. Matsukiyo)
  A discount pharmacy chain that grew dramatically and became highly visible everywhere in the mid-1990s. Recognized by its yellow signboard.
  
  
• Doutor Coffee (pron. Dotôru Kôhii)
  Probably the biggest among all self-service coffee-shop chains, serving coffee and snacks at a reasonable price, that sprang up everywhere in the early 1990s. Recognized by its yellow-and-black signboard. Sometimes I spend up to 2-3 hours studying English in the upstairs hall of a Doutor Coffee shop where I don't have to see the sales clerks. Other chains include Veloce, Pronto, Giraffe, Starbucks Coffee and Café de Crié. All these chains have free water servers at your disposal, unlike in American-style Burger chains (McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mos Burger, Mister Donut, First Kitchen, Freshness Burger, etc.).
  
  
• Plastic frogs and revolving stripes
  Many pharmacies have a light-green plastic doll of a frog in front of the entrance. Barber's shops usually have a revolving stripe of intertwined white, blue and red in front of the entrance.
  
  
• Ochanomizu
  A student-prone commercial quarter in central Tokyo. Catches the eye with its large number of music-related small shops (including those selling musical instruments) and of sports gear shops. It forms a single entity with Jimbôchô, known for its second-hand bookshops, where the clientele tends to include more salaried workers. Eateries have reasonable prices.
  
  
• Waseda
  A student-prone commercial quarter formed around Waseda University in the northwestern part of central Tokyo. Prices are reasonable. Relatively few people are aware of this fact, but Waseda has a large lot of good second-hand bookshops.
  
  
• Weekly comics magazines (manga shûkanshi)
  Japan boasts a large circulation of weekly comics magazines. You see them everywhere - in station kiosks, in less upmarket restaurants, and inside public wastebins in train stations. I think I read somewhere that comics constitute one third of all publications in Japan.
  
  
• Big transport hubs and department store rooftops
  I like walking in the crowd at big transport hubs like Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, in the maze of underground passageways, staircases, shopping malls and department stores. Up to 5-6 different rail lines share a station there. I also like standing on the rooftop of a department store, where you usually find kids' playgarden, a pet shop or a plant shop.
  
  
• Multi-use buildings (zakkyo biru)
  Japanese cities are characterized by these multi-use buildings, concrete blocks rented piecewise by different establishments, like restaurants and bars, business offices, association offices etc.
  
  
• Game centers (gêmu sentâ, abbr. gêsen)
  Found in most commercial quarters, these game establishments are equipped with video games of the Sega type, as well as what is called "UFO catchers", with which you try to haul up stuffed dolls or other stuff with a robot arm.
  
  
• Chinese restaurants (Chûka ryôri-ten)
  The contemporary Japanese cuisine is an eclectism of three major elements - Japanese, Chinese and Western. Since the 1980s, Korean elements are also flowing in. However, what is usually called Chinese food in Japan is in fact a Japanese adaptation of Chinese cuisine, and is not necessarily the same as what is eaten in China. The "Chinese" restaurants constitute a large part of popular eateries of the cheapest rung. The food they serve can be classified into several categories - noodle soup (râmen), grilled raviolis (gyôza), rice with toppings (domburi), fried dishes (itame-mono), etc.

  Food served in other categories of popular eateries is often an eclectism of Japanese and Western elements. In fact, many Western recipes, like pork cutlet (tonkatsu) for example, have become so common that they have become, with some adaptation, an integral part of the Japanese popular cuisine. However, some eateries, including noodle (udon/soba) shops, still tend to stick to the purely Japanese style of cooking. Some bars (izakaya, nomiya) serve a reasonable and good-quality lunch-set in the purely Japanese style.
  
  

• Public toilets (kôshû toire)
  All train stations, bookshops, department stores and other sorts of shops are equipped with free public toilets. If you hear a natural call while shopping or walking in the street, all you have to do is to rush into the nearest shop. There are two kinds of toilets - the squat-type washiki (Japanese-style) and the yôshiki (Western-style).
  
  
• Cemetery (bochi)
  Japanese graves (haka) are in the Buddhist style, featuring an upright stone column, usually with a big frontal engraving like "Grave of the xxx family (xxx-ke no haka)" or "Ancestral grave (Senzo dai-dai no haka)". Sometimes you see the names of the deceased individuals engraved on the stone too. The habit of giving the dead person a posthumous name (kaimyô), consisting of about 10 Chinese characters, is also widely practised. Occasionally you see slender wooden plates with Sanskrit letters written on them. People are cremated when they are dead.
  
  
• Bamboo clothes-poles (sao-dake)
  Quite often you hear peddler's trucks calling out "Sao-dake" in a recorded voice, although clothes-poles are more likely to be made of plastic or steel these days.
  
  
• Women going out together
  A collective sensation of feminine solidarity is highly marked in present-day Japan, and Japanese women often go out or party in an exclusively feminine company, unlike in many European countries. In shopping quarters, you are likely to find as many exclusively feminine parties as mixed ones (exclusively male parties have become less visible these days).
  
  
• Kappa-Bashi utensils wholesale quarter
  About 0.7 km to the west of Asakusa, there is a very interesting wholesale merchants' street stretching in the north-south direction for about 0.9km, called Kappa-Bashi Dôgu-Gai (Kappa Bridge Utensils Road). There you find small businesses selling tableware, food samples for restaurants, freezers and signboards for shops, and all other sorts of everyday life utensils.
  
  
• Dyeing one's hair in brown (chapatsu)
  In the 1990s, along with a radical de-masculization of the society, young Japanese men got to prefer taking on a less masculine, more sexually neutral outlook, and dyeing one's hair brown came into fashion among the youth for both sexes. "Chapatsu" is an ingenious neologism, derived from the word "cha" (brown) and rhyming with "kimpatsu" (blond).
  
  
• Convenience stores (kombiniensu sutoa, usually abbr. to kombini)
  Convenience stores, which first appeared in the 1970s, has now become an indispensable part of the Japanese life. Major chains include Seven Eleven (U.S.-based), Family Mart, Lawson, Sunkus, a.m. p.m. and so on. They usually work from early in the morning till late at night, and some in urban areas are open around the clock. In the 1990s, it became possible to pay public utility (electricity, gas, water, telephone) bills at convenience stores. The density of convenience stores almost reached saturation point.
  
  
• Pigeons (hato), sparrows (suzume), and crows (karasu)
  Pigeons, sparrows and crows are the three major feathered populations in Japanese cities. I mention this on purpose, because this may differ from one country to another. Crows hunt for food contained in plastic garbage bags in dumping grounds, and they are getting violent in some areas, posing threat to local residents.
  
  
• Electric wires in the air
  When in European cities, I missed the electric wires in the air which are an indispensable element of Japanese urban landscapes.
  
  
• Pachinko parlors
  In a commercial quarter or in front of a train station, you often see one or more pachinko (pinball game) parlors. It is deafeningly clamorous inside, both with muzak and with clattering of the balls. In front of a newly open pachinko parlor, you usually see displayed a lot of huge white-and-red flower wreaths, presented by other businesses in the neighborhood to cheer up the atmosphere.
  
  
• May peace prevail on earth (Sekai jinrui ga heiwa de ari-masu yô ni)
  A slender white pole, with an inscription "May peace prevail on earth" given in several languages, is a fairly common sight. The erection of these poles is sponsored by a religious movement which relatively few people are acquainted with.
  
  
• Tram Arakawa Line (Toden Arakawa Sen)
  Arakawa Line is the only line that is still left of Tokyo's tram network. With the number of passengers decreasing, the line is facing financial difficulty. What is worrisome still, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, with a big student population and situated along the line, is going to move out in 2000.
  
  
• Discount camera shops
  In animated shopping districts like Ikebukuro and Shinjuku, you can find legion of discount camera shops, which usually occupy an entire building, typically about 4-7 stories high. They call themselves camera shops, but in fact they deal with all kinds of household electric appliances. Biggest chains include Bic Camera (Bikku Kamera), Sakuraya, and Yodobashi Camera, and each of them has its own theme song. A discount optician's shop, Megane Drug (Megane Doraggu), has its own theme song, too, and uses the image of Momotarô, a folktale hero, as its trademark.
  
  
• Gyûdon (beef bowl)
  Gyûdon, a bowl of rice topped with cooked beef and onion, is one of the standard dishes offered in Japanese-style fast-food chains. Major chains include Yoshinoya and Matsuya.
  
  
• Family restaurants (famirii resutoran, abbr. famiresu)
  "Family restaurants" are half-American, half-Japanese style restaurant chains, with prices a little higher than in popular eateries but still reasonable (1,000-1,500 yen ?). They typically look like drive-in restaurants, but they are found not only along suburban highways but also in the central city. Major chains include Denny's (Deniizu), Jonathan's (Jonasan), Royal Host (Roiyaru Hosuto) and Skylark (Sukairâku). Young people often hang out in family restaurants to chat, and there is, in the slang, even a verb "deniru", meaning "to hang out in Denny's".
  
  
• Bicycles (jitensha; slang - chari, charinko)
  Bicycles are a very popular means of transportation, though not so much so as in China. Many people go to the train station by bike, and to the supermarket by bike. In front (or maybe at the back) of a supermarket, there usually is a parking lot, but there is a chronic shortage of parking space near train stations. Illegal parking of bikes around train stations is a common headache for municipal administrations.
  
  
• Two-point frames (tsû pointo furêmu) and half-rim frames (hâfu rimu furêmu)
  During the 1990s, two-point frames (with no rim for the lenses) came into fashion among glasses wearers, and this fad was soon followed by a vogue of half-rim frames (with the lenses lacking the lower half of the rim). These two types of frames for glasses remained highly popular approximately from 1993 to 1999, when they were rapidly replaced by oval (vertically flat and horizontally long) frames, often in colors (brown, red, violet, grey, blue, etc.), made of either plastic or metal.
  
  
• Catch sales (kyatchi sêrusu)
  In the 1980s, the "catch sales" fraud became a big social problem. In busy commercial quarters like Shibuya, Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, young agents, posed as pollsters, talked to credulous college students and asked them to answer a public opinion poll. Then they talked the victim into coming to join them in a café or in their sales office, where they surrounded the victim in a large number and forced him [her] to sign a purchase contract with importunate and coercive manners. A variant of the "catch sales" was the so-called "girlfriend [boyfriend] trade (koibito shôhô)", in which a young agent posed as a girlfriend [boyfriend] of the victim before beginning to urge him [her] to buy such and such things. These days, catch sales are not so rife, but you should still think twice before answering a pollster in busy commercial quarters.
  
  
• San'ya
  San'ya is well known nationwide, along with Ôsaka's Airin Chiku (or Kama-ga-saki), as one of the skid rows where the socially most vulnerable men, many of them homeless, flock to live in search of day labour and stay in small inns. It is located near the northeastern end of Taitô-ku, about 1.5 km to the north of Asakusa, east of Minowa station and south of Minami-senju station. On the bank of the nearby Sumida river, you see a lot of light blue plastic sheets, under which people live.
  
  
• Shibamata
  On the eastern verge of Katsushika-ku bordering Chiba Prefecture, there is a small shrine called Shibamata Taishakuten. This workaday shrine enjoys a national fame, because it was used as a central location in the movie series "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" featuring the street peddler "Tora-san". Nearby is Yagiri no Watashi, a famous ferry across Edo River, where the traditional ferryboat still operates.
  
  
• Den'en Chôfu
  This is a well-known bourgeois residential quarter situated in the northwestern corner of Ôta-ku. Other rich folks' enclaves include Seijô in Setagaya-ku, Shôtô in Shibuya-ku, western Chiyoda-ku (eg. Kôji-machi and Banchô); Himon'ya in Meguro-ku; and a large portion of Minato-ku (eg. Akasaka).
  
  
• Kichijôji (slang - Jôji)
  This is a medium-sized transport hub, forming a shopping and amusement district around it, situated in the western suburb of Musashino City. Nearby is Inokashira Park, known for its pond. Kichijôji is haunted by young folk.
  
  
• Ôta-ku
  Ôta Ward, in southern Tôkyô, is known for its high concentration of small and medium-sized manufacturing-related enterprises, concentrated in its eastern part (including Ômori, Kamata and Haneda). It is said that the brilliant post-war development of the Japanese industrial technology was owed, in fact, to the diligence and craftsmanship of innumerable anonymous workers in innumerable anonymous small businesses based in Ôta-ku. Under the current economic recession, these small businesses are suffering from a serious crisis. The busy shopping quarter around the Keihin Kyûkô and JR Kamata stations has a working-class atmosphere. What is unlikely at first glance, on the westernmost corner of Ôta-ku is lodged the bourgeois residential quarter of Den'en Chôfu. Small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises are concentrated in Sumida-ku (in eastern Tôkyô), too.
  
  
• Mikawajima
  Mikawajima, in Arakawa-ku in northeastern Tôkyô, is normally known as the biggest focus of the Korean-Japan community in Tôkyô. There, you can find many shops putting up signboards written in Korean. My intuitive impression is that this Korea-town is now being invigorated by the arrival of a new wave of South Korean visitors and immigrants, although I don't know if this interpretation is correct or not. I think like this, partly because the traditional Korean-Japanese population doesn't typically put up Korean-language signboards, and partly because the sight is fairly similar to what you see in the new Korean quarter in Ôkubo (north of Shinjuku). In Higashi Ueno 2-chôme, across a big street from the Ameyoko shopping quarter, is a fairly small row of Korean-Japanese shops and restaurants with no special name (some call it the Ueno Arirang Street). Nearby is a concentration of pachinko machine dealers (Ueno Pachinko Village).
  
  
• Yoshiwara
  Yoshiwara in Taitô-ku, to the north of Asakusa, SE of Minowa and SW of San'ya, is known as a red-light district that officially recognized under the Edo shôgunate. It is still being a red-light district, perhaps the second most famous in Tôkyô after Kabuki-chô in Shinjuku.
  
  
• Ôkubo
  Ôkubo, to the north of Shinjuku, is known as Little Seoul, or the focus of the community of "newcomers" (since the 1980s) and temporary visitors from South Korea. The ethnic town is centered along the Shokuan Dôri street.
  
  
• Tsukishima and Tsukuda
  Tsukishima and Tsukuda are old working-class residential quarters on reclaimed land in Chûô-ku, although the atmosphere is not very evident at first sight.
  
  
• Yanesen
  Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi in Bunkyô-ku, abbreviated as Yanesen, are a large, very atmospheric traditional residential quarter. There is a high concentration of Buddhist temples in Yanaka. Yanesen was so named by Mori Mayumi, editor of a community magazine.
  
  
• Wholesale merchants' quarter in Nihombashi
  Nihombashi Bakurô-chô and Nihombashi Yokoyama-chô are known as a large wholesale merchants' quarter, which rivals Kappa-Bashi in size. It is mainly textiles that are dealt with here. There is a smaller wholesale merchants' quarter for clothes to the east of Nippori station. (Incidentally, in around 2-23 Nishi Nippori, a little to the north of Nippori station, is a small wholesale merchants' lane for mom-and-pop candies.)
  
  
• Turd Building (Unko Biru)
  Asahi Beer's building in Azuma-Bashi near Asakusa, which is topped with a golden cloud that resembles a turd.
  
  
• Daikan'yama
  A chic and elegant commercial district with a French feel, formed on the north and west side of Daikan'yama station of the Tôkyû Tôyoko Line in southern Shibuya-ku. Popular with the youth, especially with women. Apart from Daikan'yama, a large portion of western Minato-ku, covering such quarters as Aoyama, Azabu, Roppongi and Shirogane, has a chic and European feel. In fact, many Westerners living in Tôkyô haunt these areas.
  
  
• Jiyû-ga-oka (Freedom Hills)
  An animated commercial district formed around Jiyû-ga-oka Station, where Tôkyû Tôyoko Line crosses with Tôkyû Ôimachi Line, on the border between Meguro-ku and Setagaya-ku. The western side, more lively, is chic, elegant and has a European feel to it, and looks like an animated variant of Daikan'yama or a gentrified variant of Shimo-Kitazawa. The eastern side is more workaday and resembles Shimo-Kitazawa as it is. Highly popular among youth. About 2km to the west is the Todoroki Valley park.
  
  
• Akasaka
  Located in Minato-ku, this quarter is known for the large concentration of high-class Japanese restaurants (ryôtei) as well as high-class clubs and bars, typically used by politicians or rich businessmen. Among them are a large number of Korean clubs and restaurants. In the past, the three biggest ryôtei and demimonde quarters were Asakasa, Shimbashi (southern Ginza) and Yanagibashi (in southern Taitô-ku, across the river from Ryôgoku), but nowadays, what is left of the traditional-style ryôtei culture is represented by the five quarters of Akasaka, Shimbashi, Kagura-zaka (in eastern Shinjuku-ku, to the east of Waseda), Mukô-jima (in Sumida-ku, across the river from Asakusa), and Asakusa. Southern Ginza (Ginza 6 to 8-chôme) rivals Asakusa in the concentration of high-class clubs and bars, too.
  
  
• Asakusa-bashi
  The neighborhood around the JR and subway Asakusa-bashi station is a working-class quarter with a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises, not least doll makers. On Kanda River to the south of the station, a large number of yakata-bune (roofed pleasure boats where banquets can be held) are operating.
  
  
• Bokutô (East of Sumida)
  The area on the east side of Sumida River, typically Sumida-ku and Kôtô-ku, has a typical atmosphere of the traditional working-class district, although there is normally little of special interest for tourists. The area has a high concentration of small and medium-sized enterprises.
  
  
• Monzen Nakachô
  Located in western Kôtô-ku, this is one of the ordinary commercial quarters in the traditionally working-class area in eastern Tôkyô. Nearby are two famous religious establishments, Fukagawa Fudôson (Buddhist) and Tomioka Hachiman-gû (Shintô).
  
  
• Kozuka-ppara and Suzu-ga-mori
  Two major execution sites in the Edo-era capital. Kozuka-ppara was located near the Minami Senju station in Arakawa-ku, but there is little in the way of memorial. Suzu-ga-mori was located in Minami Ôi, Shinagawa-ku, and a small memorial park with cenotaphs is maintained.
  
  
• Karugamo
  A family of karugamo (sort of ducks) lives on an articifial pond on the premises of Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Tôkyô's Ôtemachi since 1983, and their cuteness attract much media attention when they make a queue and cross the road to the ditch of the Imperial Palace. Mitsui even designates a Duck Lady (Karugamo Redi) whose job is to take care of the ducks.

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