“This city works too hard”, claimed the young man. Sitting in a smoky kissaten in Kōenji, he explained to us why he’d enjoyed living overseas so much. Tokyo works famously to its limits, and it became a theme during our recent research trip, recurring in conversations with friends and strangers. Six-day working weeks, hours that stretch late into the night, and staggered office departures still prevail, we would hear. 

What I also noticed, though, was the city’s equally enduring knack for decompression after a day’s work. Each evening, noren curtains appear in doorways and izakaya lanterns flicker on. Groups of coworkers gather in refuge, shoulder-to-shoulder with ties loosened, at these informal dining spots. Tokyo, tightly wound as it is, knows how to unwind like few other cities.

An izakaya’s unpretentious ambience is, in part, down to its layered interior: handwritten menus pinned to the wall, Shōwa-era beer adverts, and aged wooden surfaces piled with crockery. Amid the scene, crates flipped upside down and placed on the ground, topped by thin cushions just comfortable enough to sit on, are transformed into seating. The same containers, modular in their nature, might also become improvised tables. It is the ubiquitous P-bako (P箱), short for plastic hako, or box, Japan’s distinctive and uniform beer crate design.