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.
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.
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.
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.
Asian cities The Public Pool as Urban Infrastructure: How Bangkok, Tokyo, and Seoul Cool Down Their Cities Every Summer Bangkok's ฿20 district pools, Tokyo's 750 ward facilities, and Seoul's Han River swimming areas do more collective urban work in summer than any single park or plaza — and they're among the least discussed pieces of Asian city infrastructure.
Asia Asian city life dispatch 24 May 2026: Tokyo's pre-tsuyu window, Bangkok's hottest week, Dragon Boat training in Hong Kong Late May across five Asian capitals — the calm before Tokyo's rainy season, Bangkok at 38°C, Dragon Boat training in Stanley Bay, the durian season opener in Singapore, and Seoul's bingsu shops reopening.
urban design The Asian High-Line: Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo Found Three Different Answers to the Disused Rail Question Seoul kept the highway honest. Singapore stripped the rail corridor pristine. Tokyo refused the park typology entirely. Three Asian answers to one question.
Tokyo Tokyo's Toranomon Hills After the Final Phase: How One Mori Project Quietly Made Central Tokyo Walkable Again The Toranomon Hills complex, fully complete in May 2026 after 24 years of phased development, did something Tokyo hadn't seen in central business districts since the 1980s: it made eight square blocks fully walkable. Urban planners across Asia have arrived to study it.
Asian cities The Asian Convenience Store at 3 AM: Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei After Dark Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei have one convenience store for every 1,200 to 1,800 residents. They are not just shops. They are the most underrated late-night public infrastructure in any Asian city.
Music Jazz Clubs in Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong: The Late-Night Pilgrimage Tokyo has more jazz clubs than New York. Seoul is building a scene from scratch. Hong Kong is holding on. Here's where to sit, listen, and forget what time it is.
Tokyo Day Trips From Tokyo That Aren't Kyoto Everyone knows you can take the bullet train to Kyoto. Here are the day trips that actual Tokyo residents take when they need to escape the city for a few hours.
Tokyo Summer in Tokyo: A Survival Guide That's Also a Love Letter July in Tokyo will try to kill you with humidity. It will also hand you a bowl of kakigori, point you toward a fireworks festival, and dare you to complain.
Fashion Harajuku in 2025: Beyond the Costume Play The tourists still come for the costumes, but Harajuku's real fashion story in 2025 is quieter, stranger, and far more interesting than the Takeshita Street spectacle.
Fitness Running Clubs in Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore Are Replacing Nightlife At 7 PM on a Wednesday in Tokyo, 200 people are gathering not for drinks or dinner but for a 10K run through Shibuya. The after-party has kombucha.
Tokyo Shimokitazawa: Tokyo's Most Stubbornly Independent Neighborhood While Shibuya and Shinjuku chase the future, Shimokitazawa digs in its heels and refuses to become anything other than itself.
