GOLDEN GAI - Is it foreigner friendly?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 12 вер 2017
- The Golden Gai is an area in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with over 200 bars in 6 alleys. Is it safe for foreigners to visit?
GET MY JAPAN TRAVEL GUIDEBOOK: www.cakeswithfaces.co.uk/prod...
We visited the Golden Gai and went to Bar Plastic Model, a bar featured in the game No More Heroes. The bars in the Golden Gai are tiny, some with only a few seats along a bar. You can walk to the Golden Gai from Shinjuku Station. It's right next to Kabukicho, the red light district, and is also close to Higashi Shinjuku and Shinjuku Sanchome metro stations.
SUBSCRIBE for more videos about Japan!
MY DESIGNS: Colourful t-shirts, cute dresses, hoodies & gifts: www.cakeswithfaces.co.uk (International shipping)
FOLLOW Cakes with Faces:
/ cakeswithfaces
/ cakeswithfaces
/ cakeswithfaces
www.google.com/+CakeswithfacesCoUk
The music is free, created with Jukedeck.
Golden Gai is beautiful. All the dozens and dozens of tiny bars is classic Tokyo in the 60s when "salary men" needed a place to hang out at before they went back to their jobs working 16 hours! I was in Tokyo in 2016, met an American pilot from Seattle and he showed me around the best neighborhoods. Shinjuku is like a well organized and cleaner Vegas. The people are kind and inviting and I felt completely safe!
You can really imagine how the Golden Gai used to be decades ago! The scale of Shinjuku really is amazing, when you compare it to somewhere like Time Square - it's Time Square on every corner!
Late, I know, but my older brother and I went to Golden Gai after we ran into a nice Australian guy that we talked about a lot of things and he brought up Golden Gai and we were interested and it seemed to work since we were both able to drink (my brother is 29 and I just recently turned 21, although the drinking age is 20 in Japan). When we got there, it was kind of a cool place; we both thought it looked like a cut-off location in the Yakuza games. Speaking of which the Yakuza is part of the history of the area, I will get to the chase, and you guys do the research.
There were a lot of bars, and all of them seemed welcoming, and a lot of them we didn't see "No Foreigners." Not to mention, everyone seemed to, in fact, want to have foreigners from all over the globe to treat, learn a few things from them and vice versa, and practice on their English. I was kind of shy because I didn't know which bars to go to, so my brother helped out on choosing. We went there a few nights to different bars during our stay in Tokyo. I got more used to the bar settings and the drinks, and got to meet a lot of different people: Americans, Australians, Irish, Koreans, Japanese locals; I even realized that even still being somewhat of a beginner, my Japanese was pretty decent. Seeing those different people felt like something from a movie.
My brother especially loved it and made a few good friends with the bartenders, and about a couple we went to, the cover charge wasn't too much, and there was one that had no cover charge for overseas people. I'm very happy we found that place and will still probably be there for a very long time.
So glad you had a great time there! It's a unique place - I'll definitely be back on my next trip! It can be a bit intimidating going into small places like these in Japan when you're not familiar with them, but more often than not they're really friendly if you go in. My friend loves the Yakuza games and really enjoyed seeing the real life locations around Kabukicho.
Bar hopping in golden gai with my Finn friend and a drunk Japanese man come up to us “ppppyyaaaaaa Japanese girl!!!!!! Pppppyyyyyawaa welcome to Japan!!!!!!” And then walked off like nothing happened. One of my favorite experiences I think ❤
Amazing 😂 These moments are the best!
Found one full of Japanese, told me the cover charge was 800 yen, but when I sat down they were all friendly, we chatted via Google Translate and they fed me a bowl of pork and noodles with my two beers = 2000 yen. £10 for all that is fine.
Sounds good! Small places like that are the best!
sounds like Lucky or Golden Dust, they both have 800 cover with a drink charge of 600 yen and depending on if they recently cooked you will get all sorts of foods there.
The reason some of the bars or Izakaya-type restaurants there or anywhere shows "No Foreigners" sign outside is, they want to avoid a situation which is they have to speak English to persuade their foreign customers to pay a cover charge.
Also, the foreign customers they've ever met heavily drunk and shouted or cried but not ordering more than 2 glasses of alcohol.
Simply, this type of customers is unwelcome regardless of their nationality.
But if they are Japanese, the landlord can talk them down in Japanese, but not to foreigners.
If all the foreign visitors were like you Cakes with Faces, they would be welcomed anywhere because you are nice and you talk with the very controlled volume.
I had heard that sometimes if the staff don’t speak English very fluently, they’ll put up a no foreigners sign to avoid getting into awkward situations. Or they just want space for their regulars, for a better sense of community than different tourists coming in all the time.
People like to buy 1-2 glasses and hop bars, we're in Japan for a limited time so we want to experience many bars, I hope they're not against bar hopping.
Great video, thank you 😊
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
Went to Golden Gai last night. Most bars just had tourists in them.
Every time I go back to Japan I notice more tourists. The charts showing the numbers are crazy. Hope you enjoyed it anyway though.
Hey, If it is called "Golden Gai," there are bound to be many tourists and foreigners there. Felt like almost everyone from every country were there.
i feel like it varies a lot, it has been certain days where none dared venture inn where i was sitting, yet the streets where fairly packed, gook a good 6-8 houres before another foreigner dared going inn where i was, tbf a lot of foreigners just wanna bar jump so if its a place with seating charge they have a tendency to shy away while those who do have usually have a lot more locals.
@@cakeswithfaces still a huge difference between 2019 and 2023, or maybe its just where people go.
Can children walk through here with their parents ? Obviously not enter the bars Enjoyed your video
There's nothing to stop anyone walking through - they're open streets like any other street, so I don't think there'd be anything to stop you.
what cake said, public road so there is no issue walking there, entering is a different story.
there are some few bars that have open 24/7 and early / midday you might be allowed to bring them in for a quick drink for yourself and juice / soda for the kid. Though never tried, i can try and get back to you regarding this though.
@@deaddrunkgamer7399 thanks mate.!!!!
All ready have an answer for this and this kinda make sense, as i feel this is a comon concensus most places i've been to.
"Yeah there is no obvious rule. I see my owners Kids and well know peopleskids many times!!! but I've never seen tourists kids in our bars though. And they can drink something without alchol like orange juice and cola"
Was the answer from my friend in Golden gai.
So, i would say ask the bartender if its okay, be vary you might need to pay the cover for both you and the child, and order them something alcohol free and it should be fine, just be polite and dont pick a place that all ready is packed.
@deaddrunkgamer7399 thanks so much mate !!! Won't hurt to ask. Thanks again
Nice video! I'm travelling to Tokyo in a few months and I'm a real fan of No More Heroes, so I wanted to ask if it's difficult to communicate with the barman at bar plastic model without knowing no japanese at all, so if using english will be ok or I need to speak a little japanese so they would undestand me. Thanks in advice!
Talking to the owners is a fun part of visiting these small places. I can speak some Japanese, so that made our experience different - but if you learn "birru" for beer, and hold up your fingers to show how many, I think that'd get your message across!! And "arigatou" for thank you will be appreciated anywhere in Japan. So just learn a couple of words, then you can communicate surprisingly well with miming and gestures. I'm sure they get a lot of tourists, so they probably recognise the word "beer"!
Talking to the owners is a fun part of visiting these small places. I can speak some Japanese, so that made our experience different - but if you learn "birru" for beer, and hold up your fingers to show how many, I think that'd get your message across!! And "arigatou" for thank you will be appreciated anywhere in Japan. So just learn a couple of words, then you can communicate surprisingly well with miming and gestures. I'm sure they get a lot of tourists, so they probably recognise the word "beer"!
Worth mentioning that Ni-Chome is a short walk away which is kind of similar but the bars are mostly LGBTQ and all shades thereof. Similar cover charges etc. Some bars have particular clientele in mind but we had no problems.
Good to know, thanks for the recommendation! :-)
i find that place to be more "club/dance" area then bar area like golden gai.
@@deaddrunkgamer7399 only on the surface. Lots of smaller bars inside the buildings.
@@rymerster tbf i didnt explore the area that well, just had a quick walk about with a local, and he mostly showed the club area, i know about some of the buildings, among them the building with Rainbow Burritos Doumo, man those stairs be scary! i wonder how many people injured themself falling down there
2:38 1h (I assume hour) 1380 yen. Is that like an all you can drink place? I never trust those places. Too sketchy with Yakuza places.
Yes! Nomihoudai = all you can drink. Sounds like a good deal.
I don't understand when people say Tokyo is expensive. I must be on drugs or something. I don't think Tokyo is expensive at all. The prices are fair and reasonable in my opinion. It's actually very similiar to US prices
1001 Rabid Tales Yes, I agree. Especially eating out is a lot cheaper than here in the UK (and better quality). But the common perception among people who’ve never been is that Tokyo’s an expensive city. Makes it a great surprise when you get there I guess!
Yeah well since you are using a stronger currency, it should be affordable for you. But compared to its neighbours, Japan is one of the pricier countries in Asia :)
Interesting! One thing I've learnt from these videos, especially the comments on my "How Expensive is Tokyo" video is that whether something's expensive or not really depends on where you live in the world!
tokyo is cheap,
is it true that the door frames around golden kai area is only 180 cm tall?
Honestly I don't know! The bars are very small, and you can see on Google Maps if you put on the aerial view, how makeshift the buildings are.
the door size varies a lot, im 176 (using sneakers with some elevation) i didnt have any noticeable difficulties getting inn.
Interesting video. Tokyo is expensive, but when I do visit Japan in future for first time Tokyo is my first choice as it's easier to get around due to being a modern international City. Are there any cheaper areas near (within an hour ) or in Tokyo you could recommend? I'm soon to go on 20 week begginers course for Japanese at uni soon I hope that will help me on my future travels.
Thanks! I found bars to be pricey, but in general Tokyo isn't as expensive as you'd think (I made a video about it that might help!): ua-cam.com/video/0kkHrTQsi44/v-deo.html If you search for 100 / 300 yen bars or "one coin bars" there are cheaper places to go out. Also at Torikizoku (which I also made a video about!) it's cheap to eat and drink. I usually buy drinks from a convenience store and take them back to the hotel - that's the cheapest option! :-) Good luck with the course - you'll enjoy being able to communicate and maybe read a few signs around Tokyo!
Thank you for responding to my question. Counting the days till comic con but especially Christmas hyper Japan. I would of said you are so lucky to travel across Japan but the statement is wrong, you have of worked very hard for your cakes and faces brand which enables you to enjoy your travels. Well done! 👍
Thanks, I do work hard!! :'-) See you at comic con!!
I'm Icelandic Norwegian and for me Japan is cheap xD and i mean tbf you make it as expensive as you want it to be, you can have a blast with barely using any money at all if your a little bit concervative about what you do.
I might go there but I really don't drink
It's an interesting place anyway - or maybe try Omoide Yokocho (aka Piss Alley) which is a bit like the food version of the Golden Gai!
Uhhh I miss the golden hair 😢
Was that a bar in the Golden Gai?
Cakes with Faces ha no it was autocorrect, I meant golden gai, so many good bars, not far from there is a bar called rock bar mother, spent some serious yen in there.
That sounds like an awesome bar! :-)
I found japan not a great place for night life to be honest more resturant style bars , or pubs underground or 2/3 floors up.
That's exactly how it is - there's more of a culture of eating as well as drinking (izakaya usually serve small plates of food as well as drinks). And Japan on the whole is a very hidden place - there's so much underground or on upper floorsl. Which adds to the population density of Tokyo, because only a portion of what there is, is on ground level. I missed so much the first time I went, because I didn't realise you have to go up elevators between buildings and up and down stairs to find everything!
@@cakeswithfaces yea it really is hidden , even locals dont know where everything is lol
Thanks for reply keep up the good work