Last week I was sitting down at a bar with an acquaintance and over a pint of beer we chatted about life overseas. Simultaneously, we hit each other with a broad yet hard to summarize question, “what are your favorite cities?” I stewed over that question for a little too long and my answers went in circles. Finally, I landed on my top five and rambled off versions of the following reasons.
Tokyo
I was a young twenty-something college graduate when I first set foot in Tokyo. The city is charged like a super battery, was my first thought. Efficiency and quality are everything and style—the quirky costumes, pristine suits, or the quirky garbs of Japan’s subculture—was a feast for the senses.
The word feast comes to mind a lot when I think about Japan. I spent four years of my life living in the country and not once did I endure a poor meal. Everything you get, from restaurants, home-cooked meals, to gas station packaged-in-a-factory-downtown meals, tastes excellent. They even do Indian food well. For a country so averted to capsaicin burns, it says a lot. Tokyo is, no matter what my friends from Osaka and Fukuoka say, Japan’s culinary heart.
The city has just under 14 million people living within the official city limits. Add to that another 20 or so million in its never-ending metro area, you get the world’s largest urban area. Considering that over a quarter of the city was leveled by incendiary bombs in WWII, its rise to becoming one of the most influential global cities on the planet is incredible.
Underneath all the slick steel facades and futuristic development is the Tokyo of old. People still crowd inside small dingy izakayas. Dark alleyways still open up to manicured gardens and Shinto Shrines. People still take their time preparing osechi-ryori for their family on New Year. There are still hole-in-the-wall shops selling woodblock prints or custom crafted knives or any number of artisanal crafts. How long this will last, nobody knows, but in today’s mass-marketed digital age, it’s comforting to know at least one global city stubbornly fights to keep its old traditions alive.
New York
No city is like New York City. It’s the cradle of American art, poetry, punk, hip-hop, and some of the world’s most innovative gastronomy. To me, New York represents America like nothing else. Flawed in every way imaginable, yet brilliant and beautiful at the same time. It’s loud, pugnacious, and in your face.
However, at its core, it is a society built by immigrants from every corner of the earth, trying to improve their lives and the lives of their family. What makes New York special are these diverse voices, opinions, and ways of doing things, each trying to make something happen in this giant urban milieu of big dreams.
My first experience with the city happened back in 2019, when I visited for a friend’s wedding. I stayed with a friend in Brooklyn and, while he was at work, made my way through the city like a madman. I ate at bodegas, delis, noodle bars in Chinatown, and went into a food-induced trance eating berbere seasoned stew at a discrete Ethiopian restaurant in Brooklyn.
New York is a true global city, in every sense of the word, and that is why I love it. I enjoyed the grittiness and the walkability. I loved hearing so many languages spoken in such a small proximity. Its restless energy and manic creativity bemused and excited me. I couldn’t get enough.
London
I love London. It’s a place where going for a night out can be life changing. Not to mention the food is so damn amazing. I’m not talking about traditional English pub food. No, I’m talking about the Indian, Bangladeshi, Cantonese, African, Caribbean, and other cuisines brought to this foggy city from cultures affected by the grip of the British Empire.
Like New York and arguably Tokyo, London is a global city. Its economy and society influence the entire globe and its GDP is higher than that of most countries. Under all the wealth, power, and influence hides a gritty and chaotic city, full of creative energy and knack for pushing the limits of expression.
Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand, my old home. It’s massive, chaotic, and hot as all hell. The people are warm, inviting, and love to feed and be fed. It’s hard to find anywhere here that doesn’t have some food cart, restaurant, or seasoned wok set up, ready for the hungry crowds to line up.
For one year I taught English here. In my free time, I roamed through the markets, narrow streets, and surrounding countryside, towns, and villages, trying to get lost, confused, and bewildered. It’s one of the best places in the world to do that.
What I miss most about the city next to the friends I made is the food. Bangkok to me is the best food-city on the planet. From hunting durian and Thai-Chinese soup on Yaowarat Road to eating everything I could at the floating market Bang Nam Phueng, I probably had the best meals of my life on these streets.
First-time visitors should, at first arrival, find a small tent-roofed noodle shop, with plastic chairs and plenty of everyday people slurping noodles, and sit down. Order by pointing or by using google translate, relax, grab some napkins to soak up the inevitable sweat, close your eyes, and go to town.
Hong Kong
I’ve always romanticized Hong Kong. It was a place so charismatic, so different from where I grew up, that it felt almost unreal. Succumbing to the bug, my good friend and I hopped on a flight to spend several days eating and drinking with our local friend. This trip was one of the best travel experiences of my life.
There’s an almost endless depth to the city. Some of the tallest buildings on earth rise out of the jungle, surrounded by mountains and sea. It carries that familiar port-city charm so many places I adore have yet felt like it was decades in the future.
During our time in Hong Kong, the three of us spent every hour eating. My friend took us to his favorite dim sum restaurants. When we’d finished, I’d ask, “where did your parents love taking you as a kid?” After his reply, I would happily say, “let’s go there now!” How three people could eat that much in such a short period was a miracle and probably something we all happily reflect on to this day.
More to Come
I have to be honest, this list was fun to write and I have plenty more cities to include and maybe a few that will be fun to critique. Los Angeles, Seoul, Prague, Vienna, Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Porto and more are definitely on my good side.
While I have your attention, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. Let me know what your favorite urban area is and why. Or, if you have any horror stories, let me hear them. After all, I think being a squeaky wheel in our rapidly urbanizing world can be a good thing.