typhoon season Who Calls the Day Off? How Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo Each Stop a City for a Typhoon Hong Kong runs on numbered signals, Taipei leaves the call to a mayor, and Tokyo's railways decide for everyone. Here is how each city stops for a typhoon, and what to do if one arrives this October.
sari-sari store The Sari-Sari Store: How a Front-Room Window Became the Philippines' Real Retail Network Long before GCash or 7-Eleven, the sari-sari store had retail figured out: sell in single pieces, extend credit through memory, never close. Here is how 1.3 million Filipino corner stores are adapting to barcode scanners and discount chains.
Asia lifestyle Konbini Culture: How Asia's Convenience Stores Became the Neighbourhood's Real Kitchen Across Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia, the convenience store has quietly become where a huge share of the region actually eats dinner — and that says more about city life than any restaurant trend.
Kuala Lumpur The Mamak Stall: How Malaysia's 24-Hour Diners Became Kuala Lumpur's Real Meeting Ground Halal, cheap, and open all night, Kuala Lumpur's mamak stalls became the one table where Malay, Chinese, and Indian Malaysians actually sit together.
Singapore The Void Deck: How Singapore Built Its Most Important Public Space Into the Ground Floor of Every Apartment Block Singapore left the ground floor of every public housing block open and unassigned — and turned it into the country's busiest shared space for weddings, wakes, and everyday neighbourly contact.
Rooftop Bars How Rooftop Bars Turned Asia's Fire-Escape Helipads Into a Skyline Economy The fire-safety rule that forced Bangkok's tallest towers to keep a helipad free is the same rule that gave the city its most photographed bars. Here's how three cities built an entire night-out economy on top of their own building codes.
Asia nightlife The Private Room Economy: How Karaoke Boxes Run Asia's After-Hours Social Life The bar counter lost. Across Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Hong Kong, the real after-hours social life happens behind a soundproofed door, booked by the hour.
Taipei Dadaocheng: How Taipei's Herbal Medicine District Became a Coffee-and-Linen Neighbourhood Without Losing Its Dried Goods In Taipei's Dadaocheng, century-old herbal medicine shops and dried seafood wholesalers now sit beside single-origin coffee bars and linen boutiques — and neither side is pretending the other doesn't exist.
Bangkok The Boat Beats the BTS: Why Bangkok Commuters Are Quietly Switching to the Canals Gridlocked roads are pushing Bangkok commuters back onto the khlong network — the diesel boats on Khlong Saen Saep and the electric ferries now running the Chao Phraya.
Seoul The Four-Cut Takeover: How a Korean Photo Booth Trend Rewrote Asia's Street-Level Retail Korean four-cut photo booths have spread from Hongdae to Harajuku, Ximending and Causeway Bay — turning fifteen-square-metre storefronts into some of the most fought-over retail units in urban Asia.
Seoul Seongsu-dong: How Seoul's Old Shoe District Became Asia's Most Photographed Street A defunct shoe-factory quarter in eastern Seoul now pulls more Instagram traffic than Gangnam — and the shoemakers who built it are being priced out of it.
Ho Chi Minh City Inside Thao Dien: How Saigon's River District Became Vietnam's Coworking and Cafe Capital Villas turned into coworking hubs, a coffee scene that rivals Melbourne's, and rent that still undercuts most of Southeast Asia -- Thao Dien is Saigon's most-discussed ward for a reason.
urban lifestyle Run Clubs Have Become Asia's New Urban Social Network Free, weeknight and built around a group chat rather than a gym membership — run clubs have quietly become the social infrastructure Asia's cities didn't plan for.
night markets Cashless Night Markets: How Asia's Street Food Scene Went Digital Without Losing Its Chaos Across Bangkok, Taipei, Jakarta and Seoul, street vendors traded cash boxes for QR codes almost overnight. The hawking, the haggling, and the chaos never left.
co-living Asia's Co-Living Boom: How Shared Housing Is Reshaping Young Professionals' Budgets From Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City, co-living operators are undercutting traditional leases on price and flexibility, but the trade-offs on space, contracts and community rarely make it into the brochure.
Tokyo Tokyo Just Cracked the World's Top 10 Most Liveable Cities. Osaka Still Beats It. Tokyo entered the EIU's world top 10 most liveable cities for the first time in 2026, but Osaka still outranks it. Here's what the numbers actually mean on the ground.
Asian cities Ohitorisama Economy: Why Asia's Best Cities Built a Whole Dining Scene Around Eating Alone From Ichiran's partitioned booths to Seoul's honbap counters and Taipei's noodle bars, Asia's biggest cities have quietly built restaurants designed around eating alone — and some do it far better than others.
urban farming Someone Has to Carry the Soil Up: The Real Work Behind Asia's Rooftop Farming Boom The rooftop farming trend swept through Asian cities fast. What decides whether a garden survives its second year has less to do with vegetables and more to do with load limits, water schedules, and who actually shows up to weed.
urban design Under the Five-Foot Way: How a 200-Year-Old Building Rule Still Runs Monsoon-Season Asia A building rule from 1822 still shelters more of monsoon-season Asia than any glass skywalk built since — and the reasons why say a lot about who cities are actually designed for.
urban living The Locker Wall: How Parcel Lockers Quietly Became Asia's Newest Piece of City Infrastructure The guard house pile-up used to be routine in Asia's high-rises. Smart-locker networks from Hive Box to PUDO to POPStation quietly made it obsolete.
Seoul The Trail Before the Timesheet: How Pre-Dawn Hiking Became East Asia's Real Office Hours Before the workday even starts, office towers across Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei empty onto mountain trails — a ritual that's less about fitness than about claiming the one hour nobody else has taken yet.
capsule hotels Sleep by the Hour: How Capsule Pods Became Asia's Backup Room Once an emergency fix for salarymen who missed the last train, Asia's capsule hotels have become the region's on-demand reset room — booked by freelancers, gamers and business travelers who just need six quiet hours.
Urban Life Where Asia's Megacities Go When It's 38 Degrees Outside Seoul designates free heat shelters, Tokyo recruits convenience stores, and Singapore tests reflective pavement — inside the infrastructure Asian cities are quietly building to survive extreme summer heat.
Urban Transit Two Wheels, One City: How Asia's Bike-Share Networks Turned the Commute Into a Habit YouBike, Ttareungyi and Anywheel didn't just add bikes to the street — they rewired how three Asian cities commute, one fifteen-minute ride at a time.
urban lifestyle The Room That Isn't a Room: How Japan's Internet Cafés Quietly Became an Emergency Housing System Cheap, deposit-free, and open all night, Japan's internet cafés became something the chains never intended: a housing safety net for workers the rental market shuts out.
