I sometimes think about Japan’s drinking culture. Whether it is an izakaya or a bar, once you start going regularly, a small community somehow takes shape.
At its center is the proprietor or bartender. Around them are the regulars, the occasional visitors, and the people stepping inside for the first time. Of course, I do not think this is unique to Japan.
On the restroom wall of a bar I often visit, there is a notice recruiting staff. It says: “When people gather, smiles are born.” I think that is true.
But I want to add something. Smiles are not the only thing born when people gather. Hatred is born too. There is jealousy. There is romance, and there is heartbreak. Someone comes to like someone, and someone comes to dislike someone else. When a circle forms, exclusion can form with it.
That is probably what it means for people to gather. And in a bar, all of it is strangely easy to see.
A place without a common purpose
When you think about it, a bar is a curious place. At a company, work provides a common purpose. At school, the purpose is learning. A family is joined by kinship.
But the people who gather in a bar have no purpose nearly so clear. At most, they have come to drink. And yet, when they keep returning to the same place, relationships slowly form.
“We haven’t seen them lately, have we?” “Those two had a fight yesterday.” “I hear they’re getting married.” “Work seems hard for them right now.” You begin to hear stories like these. The lives of people you did not know yesterday gradually enter your own.
And sometimes those relationships reach further into a person’s life than we might imagine. I once saw this on my way home after drinking at my usual bar.
Outside a bar I did not know along the street, I saw a young proprietor telling a man, “Never come back here again.”
He was, in other words, being barred from the place.
I assumed the man would become angry too. Or perhaps he would say nothing and walk away. But he did neither.
“Please don’t do this.” “Please forgive me.” He kept repeating words like these. In a modern age when gods and faith have faded from everyday life, I felt that, for the first time, I had seen true supplication.
I do not know what had happened. I do not know who was right. But one thing was clear: to that man, the bar had not been merely somewhere to drink.
If he went there, someone would be around. There were people who knew him. There were the usual conversations. Somewhere along the way, those things had become part of his life.
I have never been banned from a bar myself. But some people become too deeply absorbed in this way of life.
A bar is neither a company nor a school. There is no contract guaranteeing that you belong. That is precisely why, no matter how strongly someone wants to remain, they may suddenly be told, “We don’t want you to come back.”
Even in a place without a common purpose, being there can itself become the purpose before you realize it.
From loving a venue to loving a neighborhood
Anyone who drinks knows that a night does not always end after one stop. You drink at the first place, walk a little, and go to a second. If you run into someone you know, you might follow them to another bar.
A bartender might tell you, “That place is interesting.” And that is how you discover somewhere new. Before long, your affection no longer belongs to just one venue.
I like this place. I like the bartender over there too. If I go there, someone will be around. At this hour, that person might be there. After the first stop, let’s go there next.
As these feelings accumulate, “I like this bar” becomes “I like drinking in this neighborhood.”
Human qualities translated into geography
From here, I want to think for a moment about Tokyo. Tokyo is one enormous city, yet within it are countless smaller neighborhoods, each with a different character. The differences are not only in the buildings or the kinds of shops. They are also in the people who gather there.
For people who love anime and games, there is Akihabara. For vintage clothing, theater, and independent culture, Shimokitazawa. For music and live houses, Kichijoji or Koenji. Some neighborhoods tend to attract comedians and people in entertainment. This is not to say that everyone in a neighborhood shares the same identity.
Even so, “That feels like Akihabara,” “That feels like Shimokita,” or “That feels like Koenji” makes enough sense to suggest that neighborhoods do have personalities.
What is more interesting is how these differences persist within such narrow distances. Shibuya, Harajuku, and Omotesando are close. So are Shinjuku and Shin-Okubo. Nakano and Koenji are only a few stations apart. Akihabara and Kanda sit next to each other. Yet move only a little, and the venues, people, clothes, music, and ways of spending the night all change.
Other major cities around the world naturally have art districts, financial districts, music districts, and immigrant neighborhoods too. I do not think this phenomenon belongs to Tokyo alone. But Tokyo may be one of the cities where the connection between people’s tastes, occupations, values, and geography has differentiated at an unusually fine scale.
Put another way: Human qualities are translated into geography. That is one way the city appears to me.
The neighborhood as a recommendation engine
This resembles something the internet does every day. You like music. You like anime. You like vintage clothing. You like drinking. Social networks, advertising systems, and recommendation engines all infer what people like and present things that seem to fit.
But perhaps Tokyo’s neighborhoods were already doing this long before the internet. People with similar tastes gather in one place. Venues open to serve them. As the number of venues grows, more people come. As people gather, a culture emerges. As that culture accumulates, the neighborhood develops a character. Then new people arrive, drawn by that character.
People create venues. Venues call people in. And as people continue to gather, a city takes shape.
Seen this way, a neighborhood begins to look like a kind of recommendation engine. Not: “We recommend this venue for you.” But: “This neighborhood might suit you.”
Bringing people to an area, not just one venue
I think this points toward an idea slightly different from today’s restaurant services. Most of those services are designed primarily to find a single place.
Decide what you want to eat. Choose an area. Search. Read the ratings. Select one venue. Each venue is compared individually. They receive stars and rankings, and businesses in the same area compete with one another. For the purpose of choosing a venue, that is rational.
But when I look at a real neighborhood, I see something this model cannot fully capture. A busy business next door is not necessarily bad for your own. If more people come to the neighborhood, some will flow into other places for their second or third stop. Someone who came for a popular venue discovers another one nearby. A regular at one bar recommends another.
Venues compete, but they also create the value of their shared area together. If so, perhaps attracting people does not have to be considered only at the level of a single venue. Bring people to one venue. Or instead: Bring people to the area.
Move beyond “I want to go to that bar” toward “I want to go to that neighborhood.”
A service for finding a neighborhood to love
I am now building a web service around this idea. You will be able to search for venues as you can on Tabelog. But I do not want its only purpose to be finding the highest-rated one.
What kinds of venues are in this neighborhood? What kinds of people gather there? What culture has formed? After the first stop, where else can you walk? If you spend an evening in the area, what paths through it are possible?
Above all, I want it to help someone realize: “I might like this neighborhood.”
Not a service for finding a good venue,
but one for finding a neighborhood to love.
That, I think, is what I want to make. I want to connect the moment someone discovers one venue
to the moment they come to love the neighborhood around it.