Crypto News: The best of Tokyo

Welcome back to Pursuits Weekly! This week Thu-Huong Ha in Tokyo is joined by Annika Inampudi and Georgie McKay in New York to our look at the world’s biggest culture stories, as well as ideas and recommendations around travel, dining and art. Sign up here to get this newsletter every Saturday in your inbox.

Marking time in Tokyo

For those who say that talking about the weather is boring, you must not have been in Tokyo this September. After 37 consecutive days of rain, the longest stretch since records began, it happened almost as if by magic, just days after the calendar flipped to October: The sun! The sky! This week, the air has been cool and clear, and the sky is pale, even blue, and the forecast says it will hold into Japan’s three-day weekend. It’s the kind of weather that makes you feel like you’re in love.

A “chain-reaction triggered by the El Niño background,” is how meteorologist Takahisa Nishikawa explained the storms to weather reporter Mary Hui. Next year could be even more unusual: The world is gearing up for a potential rare Super El Niño, which could affect everything from global sugar production to Japan’s ski season.

Unable to bike or walk outside over the last month, I was confined to the city’s packed trains, sidestepping people’s leaking umbrellas and sweating from the humidity and communal body heat. This meant a lot of time staring into the blank face of Suica Penguin, the placid, genderless, round-eyed mascot for railway company JR East, and pondering its cultural impact over the last 25 years. The beloved mascot’s pending retirement has set off a frenzy of nostalgia and spurred queues for merch within already packed stations.

Yoyogiuehara Photographer: Kento Mori for Bloomberg Pursuits — I know a spot.

Now, it’s a great time to be in the city above ground. If high-end tuna carving in your home city won’t cut it, October through December in Tokyo has blissful weather, and traveling around Japan is much more mellow than cherry blossom season. If you do fancy a jaunt, I don’t recommend zipping all over the city to shrines and high-end sushi spots you found on some list; instead, I’d choose no more than one area a day and really take your time.

Bloomberg travel expert Brandon Presser agrees, writing in his Two-Night Minimum city guide, “Tokyo (Japan, really) reveals itself much more earnestly when one goes deep instead of wide.” And anyway, says Presser, “some of the best meals [he’s] had in the city cost less than $40.”

After Tokyo’s fickle summer, I’m savoring every day of blue, however impermanent this bliss may be. On the city’s worst days, the crowds and urban jungle are massive, impenetrable and dizzying. And on its best, its winding streets connect and fan out like lichen, infinitely unknowable and full of hidden treasure.

By the numbers

£2,150

About $2,841, how much Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat restaurant lost in a week as diners stole 477 of their cutesy golden cat chopstick holders. Food editor Kate Krader turns from petty thief to detective as she investigates why restaurant-goers have such sticky fingers.

200 lbs

The weight of a single bluefin tuna served at the increasingly popular live sushi-butchering shows across the US, Alina Dizik writes.

20%

Better buy that new Porsche now, or risk paying that price increase. The German sports car manufacturer will sell its top-end sports cars for more than €330,000 ($370,134) by the end of the decade, up from about €270,000 this year, William Wilkes reports.

Ice mermaids

Chile’s Patagonia region is emerging as a cold-water swimming destination, writes Antonia Mufarech. Record-setting swimmer Bárbara Hernández is inspiring a growing community of athletes to embrace one of the world’s most extreme endurance sports.

Midnight snacks

ESS Photographer: Chris Arias/Eldridge Street Store — A little more lively than *Nighthawks*.

Nothing beats good food at an inappropriate hour. From second dinners to post-2 a.m.-Odyssey-screening munchies, diners are embracing late-night meals, reports Matthew Kronsberg. Amid worries about the great American fun shortage, restaurants and bars are extending their operating hours, re-awakening dormant nightlife in cities around the world.

Dinner Party Topic: The Drinks Business

Be the smartest person at the table with some focused factoids.

Whisky in space? Drink up. Wayyyy up. Whisky will be aged in space to discover whether orbiting Earth can accelerate maturation and produce a bold and complex tipple, according to the Telegraph.

Shhh, they’ll never know. Napa Valley is facing a wine glut, and desperate vintners are offloading premium product under discounted private labels at Kroger, Costco and Aldi, Judy Lagrou writes.

Grandpa drink no longer. Soju’s lower-alcohol cousin, makgeolli, was once considered South Korea’s least-trendy drink. Now, the traditional rice wine is on the ascent as global interest in K-content supercharges the country’s cuisine, writes Denny Thomas, Hyonhee Shin and Soobin Kim.

Banana Ball nation

The Savannah Bananas dance at the start of a game in Kansas City, Kansas, in May. — Go bananas!

For the Savannah Bananas baseball team, viral gags are the point. Who wins is secondary. But the $500 million barnstorming juggernaut is also playing with some old, overworked tropes, writes Ben Austen.

Counterpoint

Jony Ive with the steering wheel of a Ferrari Luce electric vehicle at the Wave by Vento tech conference in Turin, Italy, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. Photographer: Giuliano Berti/Bloomberg — In the driver’s seat .

“It’s very hard to make something that is new and different, and its newness is a consequence of it being better.”

Jony Ive, on the design of the Ferrari Luce

In a rare response to the negative reviews of the Ferrari Luce, designer Jony Ive defended his vision of Modena’s first fully electric supercar, saying that people respond more warmly to the car in person. Car columnist Hannah Elliott provides key context on Ferrari’s electric leap.

The internet’s last best place

As kids, we were told not to trust Wikipedia. Today’s middle schoolers are told the same thing about ChatGPT. Noam Cohen takes a look at Richard Cooke’s new, sweeping history of Wikipedia, The Last Best Place on the Internet. The book traces how the volunteer-built encyclopedia set the stage for today’s chatbots.

One Very Specific Recommendation: Pondering sin at Hell’s Museum

diorama Photographer: Thu-Huong Ha/Bloomberg — A Hell’s Museum diorama.

The Hell’s Museum complex within Haw Par Villa, Singapore’s theme park dedicated to Chinese-ness, has been striking fear into the hearts of children since the early 1950s. The larger park has been closed indefinitely for repairs since last December, but you can still access the cult-favorite Ten Courts of Hell, and take a stroll through the gruesome punishments for various sins.

Study the little human figure in apparent agony, in the middle of having his heart sliced open and his heart taken out ... for what exactly? He didn’t respect his elders. Obviously.

The park was my final stop on a two-day experiment in offline travel, and being fully present in the cavernous exhibition hall was genuinely spooky. It was created by Aw Boon Haw, one of the two brothers best known for the Tiger Balm empire, so although it’s changed ownership, you can still find vestiges of the days when it also doubled as an advertisement for the famed ointment. Don’t miss the lengthy preamble before the exhibits explaining how each of the world’s religions approach time (circular or linear) and how it relates to life after death. —Thu-Huong Ha

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