It's got the party places. It's got the party people. Now if only someone could come up with a way to get the people to the places, Tokyo could truly call itself a 24-hour city.
Over the last few years, Tokyo's night life has exploded: restaurants, shops, bowling alleys, gyms, supermarkets, dance clubs, catering to an untiring crowd of nocturnal revellers. Everyone seems to have realized that longer hours mean more business (and more pleasure) -- except Tokyo's transportation industry, which cites "little demand" for 24-hour trains and buses.
"It is too much of a burden for us," says a spokesman for East Japan Railways, who declined to be named. "For instance, even if we do run the trains, it wouldn't be any use running just the Yamanote Line," he claimed. "We would have to run the other lines as well, and this whole operation is too costly for something that has little demand."