Been living in Tokyo for 4 years now with my grandparents being from the Tokyo suburbs. The cool thing with Tokyo is as author says, it build upon itself, chaot

Been living in Tokyo for 4 years now with my grandparents being from the Tokyo suburbs. The cool thing with Tokyo is as author says, it build upon itself, chaotically, while maintaining drops of ancient cultures. But compared to the Big5 of trendy mega cities (NY, London, Paris, Tokyo and HK) the biggest thing is just that things *just works* ik Tokyo. Infrastructure is reliable, streets are clean (except maybe Kabukicho), people follow the rules, no Parisians, safe, trains come in time, things are clustered around stations so everything is close. I haven't lived in the 5 cities but talking/working for an extended time with people from there, the big feature seems to be that somehow Tokyo have so far dodged a lot of the issues big cities fall in to. There's some annoying quirks too, such as all the public transport stopping at around midnight, but that somehow added more to color an unique nightlife. The biggest downside, probably compared to NY/London/HK is that it can feel quite lonely at times if you don't look or speak like a local. But there are hard-to-find microcosm of mini-communities, my recent favorite being SF-styled, mostly US expat populated Harry's Sandwich bar. When you come as a tourist you'll probably not find those, and like many of my friend just draw the conclusion that it's a lonely, isolating mega city, from all the "solo-friendly" stores and trains cladded with tired salary mens in suit you'll inevitably walk by。 But I do wonder why the sudden tourist surge? It have been crazy crowded after covid and almost all my friends decided to go to Tokyo this year. Is it really just opening up and the weak yen?