How to meet people in Tokyo when you're travelling alone

Tokyo makes being alone effortless. You buy a ramen ticket from a machine, sit at a counter, eat, leave. Nobody looks twice. Convenience stores are open all night. The trains are silent. You can spend a whole week here and never say a word to anyone except "sumimasen".

That is the trap. The city is so comfortable for one person that it never pushes you towards two. Here is where the pushing has to come from you.

Sit at the counter

The single most useful habit in Tokyo: when a place has a counter, sit at it. At an izakaya or a yakitori grill, the counter is where the cook is, and the cook is the one person in the room whose job is to talk. The people either side of you are usually regulars, and regulars talk to whoever the cook is talking to.

The alleys of tiny bars are built for this. Omoide Yokocho by the west exit of Shinjuku station, Nonbei Yokocho next to Shibuya station, Ebisu Yokocho, and Golden Gai in Shinjuku, where two hundred bars each seat six or eight people. In Golden Gai, a sign in English at the door means visitors are welcome; a bar with no sign is usually a regulars' place. Standing bars, tachinomi, are even better: there are no seats, so you are already shoulder to shoulder.

One thing that confuses first-timers: the small dish you didn't order that arrives with your first drink. That is otōshi, and it is the seat charge. It is not a mistake and not a scam, and it is why the bar can afford to let you sit for two hours over one beer.

Go where the same people go at the same time

Tokyo's regulars keep schedules, and a schedule is something you can join.

The five-kilometre loop around the Imperial Palace has runners on it from six in the morning and again after work, all going anticlockwise by convention. Run it twice in a week and you will start seeing the same faces. Yoyogi Park on a Sunday afternoon is the closest Tokyo gets to a public living room.

Mount Takao is the classic half-day out: fifty minutes from Shinjuku on the Keio line, a few hours up and down, and a bowl of soba at the bottom. It is a hike people do in groups, and a group that walks up together eats together afterwards. If you are going to propose one plan to strangers in Tokyo, a Takao morning is the safest bet there is.

Every plan in Tokyo has a clock

The last trains leave around midnight, a little earlier or later depending on the line, and taxis across the city are expensive. So a Tokyo plan is one of two things: dinner at seven that ends by eleven, or a night that goes until the first train at five. Say which one it is when you propose it. People decide based on that.

Small beats big here too

There are language-exchange nights in Shibuya and Shinjuku most weeks, and they are fine. They also have the sixty-people problem from the first post on this blog: two hours of talking to no one in particular. Four people at a yakitori counter under the train tracks at Yurakucho will do more for your week than any event with a name.

Plans that work well at that size in Tokyo: breakfast at the Tsukiji outer market at eight, before the crowds; a walk through Inokashira Park to Kichijoji; the second-hand shops of Shimokitazawa on a weekday afternoon; a sentō bath followed by beer, if everyone is up for the bath part.

The boring safety part

Tokyo is one of the safest cities you will ever walk around at night. The one thing to actually watch for is the touts in Kabukicho, the men who invite you into a bar "with no cover charge". Walk past. Never follow a tout anywhere. Everything else is the usual: first meeting in a public place, tell someone where you are going, keep your own way home. More on the safety page.

Where MeetMap fits

MeetMap is a map of small plans happening soon near you: a coffee at eight, a hike to Takao on Saturday, a table with one seat left tonight. Each pin shows the time, the place and how many seats remain. You take a seat and you are in the group chat.

If there is something on the map in Tokyo tonight, join it. If it is quiet, post the first one: "Yakitori under the tracks at Yurakucho, 7pm, three seats." It fills faster than you would think, and it ends by eleven, so everyone catches the train.