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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

One thing that kinda sucks in Tokyo in particular is a dearth of just chill public spaces. I think Go and Shogi both benefit from incumbent status, with club spaces and the like existing. Chess meetups right now seem to be relegated to city community spaces (glad they exist!). But I was real jealous when I was in Brisbane for a bit and visisted a chess meetup that was just happening in a cafe. Also saw some kids playing in the local library. It's nice for there to be spaces that allow for activities that don't require an exchange of money beyond maybe buying one drink.

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The concept is called third place and I think it's super beneficial to any city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

yup. Big reason behind the social isolaion that was happening even before the pandemic.

- Shops become corporatized, elbow out the mom and pops, and try to minimize loitering. This is combined with the decline of malls in some countries so there isn't really a "hang out" place anymore - community centers shrank and closed down, with the reamining becoming more focused on parents and children, so not quite a place for some 20/30s age single people to mingle. - decline in religious beliefs kn the newer generations mean church or similar sorts of groups aren't an option.

In other words, If you're single and not into a bar scene, the Third Place is nearly impossible to find these days. There are still in theory plenty of places left that I didn't list, but my personal experience reflects a lot of "Bowling Alone". I can be in a cafe or gym, but I haven't felt I was a part of a social experience in such environments since college. It's no different from being behind someone at a cash register; maybe I can get some small talk, but it never translates to a continuing friendship.

Very interesting.

> Examples of third places include churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks. In his book The Great Good Place (1989), Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

I wonder if there is an online example as well for something like this. I was tempted to say something like forums but I don't think that's the case.

For the younger generations Fortnite has a third-place vibe, which is fascinating to me as someone that played FPS as a youngin and never considered using them primarily to socialize

There's an abundance of chill public spaces in Tokyo! So many cool parks, public rooftop spaces, and so on. I think it's just cause chess isn't popular.

There are nice spots, but a lot of them do not want you organizing events inside them. Like many things this is all pretty funancialized (it doesn’t help that new constructions are almost all filled with chains staffed by part-time staff).

On top of that parks don’t tend to have that many tables (Yoyogi exists but Yoyogi is one park).

Community spaces kinda work but you need a quorum of people who live in the ward, so there’s some startup difficulties there.

Chess isn’t that popular but it’s a hell of a lot easier in many places to just take over a space during sleepy weekend AMs.

At least in US which is also usually pretty commercial it is a lot more palatable to propose to a business owner if you promise to come in during an extremely slow time period (e.g. Monday for a bar). But otherwise the worst for the owners is a bunch of slow people sitting a long time ordering very cheap things, taking seats from more spendy, higher turnover customers.

It also doesn’t help that my impression of Japan when I went there, was that a lot of these small businesses have room for maybe a dozen people at best.

Yeah that's a good point. I know a couple events whose scheduling is "we ask the bar what day they usually have ~0 people, and we will instead bring 30 people". Always seems a bit limited to bars, but it's something!

Restaurants can also be willing to host especially if they’re open all day and have slow times. One restaurant even put up a plaque for the group that has been meeting there at 10AM on Mondays for ten+ years.

Coffee shops are smaller these days, but for a small group it can work.

The emphasis here is on chill, those are all outdoor spaces and Tokyo gets quite cold during the winter

Is that true? According to Wikipedia:

> The coolest month is January, averaging 5.4 °C

Doesn’t sound very cold to me. If anything, I’ve only heard complaints about how hot it often is in Tokyo (and most of Japan, except Hokkaido).

Looking at these temperature plots, it seems comparable to late March here in Toronto, or Chicago, or New York. Slightly lower temperature swing. Some days could be quite nice - warm, even. Others could be near freezing, with wind chill making exposed hands uncomfortably cold. Not great for chess.

Compare Brisbane and Tokyo: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/144671~143809/Comparison-...

Brisbane has "Comfortable" temperature every single day of the year. Tokyo's winter is cold and Tokyo's summer is hot.

It’s true. I’ve done a number of trips to Japan and learned to pack winter clothes after the first one. The evenings get really cold

Maybe not too cold, but definitely too hot to be in direct sunlight.

I meant chill in the “not caring that you are playing chess in the place”. Most cafes or restaurants here have express rules against playing card games or the like at tables, for example (for good reason)

What's the good reason?

If you're sitting there playing card games (especially if you're young and cash-strapped), you're gonna hog a table for a while and order the bare minimum. All the while there might be people lining up to come in, or even worse people deciding against coming in cuz it's full.

This is more of a problem in high traffic areas ofc, but like on the weekend _lots of places_ are high-traffic.

Ultimately the deeper problem is that places like cafes and restaurants are mostly "give us money so we can pay the building's rent". The margins are super thin from the get-go, and rent is so high that places really really really need to cycle through people during peak hours.

High rent means smaller restaurants, means that (say) 4 tables locked in for a long period is a much bigger deal, and the variability is a much higher problem.

Of course if you go to a place that's very empty from the get go and is pretty big, people don't really care. Just that there aren't that many places like that in major traffic centers.

Karaoke box is an general paid solution. Everything except bring foods or sexual act is accepted.

Only after 18 I ever had trouble with playing in a bar/café. I always ask before, and sometimes they loan you the game. I even have a bar where I can play chess until 1:45 (it close at 2) and they're the one loaning the chessboard.

For a few years my friends and I played chess in various pubs almost weekly and we never had any complaints at all.

There's a group meeting every Wednesday in a pub in Shibuya.

See https://www.tokyocheckmates.com/ for more info.

Thanks for this info! I’m over near Asakusa so it’s a bit of a trek but seems fun

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