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==Additional Information==
==Review of {{PAGENAME}}==
===Biomes===
The Tokyo area is heavily [[street]]-[[grass]]-[[water]] [[biome]], with [[mountain]]/[[desert]] types being rare. Actually, 72% of Japan is mountainous and get mountain spawns, but the Tokyo area is a huge plain. Pocket mountain biome can be found in Tokyo though. The south side of Shibuya station has the [[Mt.Moon]] biome on a small area. The area around [[Shinagawa]] station is also Mt. Moon biome and gets an everyday [[Dragonite]]. And many parts of the [[Tokyo Bay]], including Odaiba and DisneySea are mountain biome too (among other things).
There's a lot of very small streams everywhere in Japan, and canals that are leftover in now residential areas that used to be rice fields in the past (requiring a lot of irrigation). So, water spawns are commonplace.
The spawn density in a city like Tokyo means you can walk around and never run out of things to catch (or [[Pokestops]] to spin), no lure needed. In addition to the already high number of pokestops, many pokestops and gyms were added through the multiple sponsorhips (Mc Donald, NTT Docomo, Aeon, Itoen, Tully's Coffee and probably other ones I forget).
From what I've read, rural players in Japan are no different than other rural players around the world. The get a whole ocean of nothing. No spawns, no sponsored pokestops, level 10 gyms filled by non local players.
===Nests===
There is something like 30-40 "usable" [[nests]] in Tokyo itself and its direct vicinity (excluding parks with an entrance fee). If you count the nests that aren't really worth going to (less than 10 nest species per hour), you get more than a hundred nests.
===Weather===
In summer it can reach 37-39°C (98-102°F) with 95% humidity. Phones were getting really hot when playing PoGo. In winter the temperature is usually around 10°C (50°F), not really cold. That's for Tokyo though, northern parts of Japan like Hokkaido average on -5°C(23°F) in winter. September is the typhoon season. Actually, the start of a typhoon was the first time I managed to collect on 10 gyms (nobody else gymming in the streets).
The day comes early in Japan, but so does the night. In summer, the sun is well up in the sky at 5:00AM and it's dark at 6:30PM. In winter, it's respectively around 7:00AM and 4:30PM.
===Player Base===
There is less players now than in summer, but Tokyo and its surroundings make ~35 million of people, so there is still many players out there.
The engaged playe rbase seems quite "old", mainly above their thirties. I see salarymen playing, or even old ladies catching things while walking their dogs. Housewives on their bikes too. There were some kids playing in summer, but they seem to have disappeared. Teenagers never played it much either. During special events, I often see parents with 3-6yo kids playing, or couples in their twenties trying to catch the event pokemon and getting all excited to see that cute [[pikachu]] with a hat. But they don't touch gyms. Gyms are mostly touched by 30yo-60yo men from what I saw.
It's hard to tell the average player level in Tokyo since the high gym turnaround doesn't let high level players stay in gyms. Level 35-37 trainers seem plentiful though when I check gyms, and there is sometimes level 40 players too. In my town, I'm the highest level player (38).
Walking while looking at your smartphone is something very common in Japan, and not restricted to PoGo., in spite of lal the warnings about that. We also heard a lot about the PoGo related accident in Japan, but this kind of lethal traffic accident happen quite often actually. If it's not Pogo, it is the driver checking SNS, watching video or reading manga.
===Social Groups===
Not much social groups actually. Reddit is mostly unknown to Japanese people. PoGo Facebook groups per town aren't a thing. Discord is unknown. 2ch is anonymous and mostly trolling. There is a strong ""inside the group"" vs ""outsiders"" aspect in many things in Japan, be it at school or work. It feels a bit the same in PoGo, no open groups welcoming everybody. There is some PoGo news sites, but it's mostly anonymous commenting. Most gym players seem to play solo.
===Gyms===
[[Mystic]] is often the dominant team, Valor second and Instinct last. [[Gyms]] in Tokyo are impossible to hold, too many players. Everybody is a nobody. On Tokyo's outskirts, there is more level 10 gyms, known names in towns and rivalries. Since tracker use is common and [[Snorlax]]/[[Dratini]] aren't that rare in the first place, gyms are filled with [[Vaporeon]]/[[Gyarados]]/Snorlax (a lot)/[[Dragonite]] (a lot). Even low level ""casuals"" usually have their Snorlaxes and Dragonites. [[Rhydon]] is a bit less frequent. Not much [[Tyranitar]]s yet, and [[Larvitar]] is very rare. A lot of Blissey because hardcore players grinded as much as they could during Valentine, even if we didn't get the amounts that were available in mountain biomes.
A lot of players walk or bike (an ultra common mean of transportation here). Bike works well because everybody owns one anyway, and you can ride indistinctly on the road or on the walkways with it. Since winter hit, there has been a rise of car players though. Car players just park in front of the gym, on the side of the already narrow roads, rather than parking at a better location and getting there on foot. I have also seen them stopping in the middle of a busy street just to catch something that had spawned.
Playing at night in Japan is quite safe, never got any trouble. Of course, crimes happen in Japan like everywhere else, but the crime rate is usually low. You can often let/forget your belongings in a place and still find them there when coming back. In my home country, letting your bag with your wallet/smartphone on your seat while you go to the restroom would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
===Cheating===
Maybe I'm a bit naive, but I had the feeling there wasn't too much spoofing until December (when it started to get colder). These days I think there is a good share of spoofers in my town, but they don't seem to be botters. The lack of botters is probably because most of the documentation and community seems based around the english language, and Japanese aren't very good at that. GPS spoofing probably requires a simple app installation.
Multi accounting is rampant though. Either for shaving, adding 3 pokemon at once, putting an easy [[prestige]]r, or gimping rival gyms. A mystic guy I met at a gym also taught me recently that buying services to fill your inventory with elite pokemon is also a thing (we were talking about an another Mystic player who already had high IV and fully powered [[Ampharo]]s, three 3500 Tyranitar 5 days after release). Yahoo Auction is the most popular auction site in Japan, and from what he told me, you share your credentials with someone selling such service and he fills your account with powerful pokemon. Probably by sniping or botting. I saw many people with 5-6 smartphones at the Lapras event, I guess it wasn't only their own alt-accounts, they were probably filling inventories on demand.
Some players can get ultra obsessive. I have a nemesis couple (Mystic) who are not only waiting for me/stalking me on 2 specific gyms, but who are also using a whole collection of alt accounts to add Flareon prestigers (Mystic account), block a gym with more [[Blissey]] ([[Instinct]] alt) or Valor alt to fill empty spots in Valor gyms with pidgeys, negating all prestiging work you could do for your team and blocking Valor players from taking the empty spots in new gyms. I highly suspect them of being the ones who have vandalized 2 of my bikes too, but that's an another story.
===Tracking===
It's the absolute norm. The kids playing in summer ? Tracker ? The girl in her twenties who looks like she's on her way to a fashion magazine photoshoot ? Tracker. The hardcore guys grinding in nests for hours ? Tracker. The 2 old ladies walking their dogs ? Tracker. The car players looping around the town in the night ? Tracker. The japanese youtubers or level 40 guys tweeting about PoGo ? Tracker.
There has been an single online tracker since forever in Japan, and it's not frowned upon. The Silph Road equivalent japanese websites consider it standard. It's actually the normal way to play for most players, and I think many never even considered it could be a TOS violation (or don't care anyway). TV shows showing PoGo stuff also openly featured trackers, it's just a normal thing. That tracker has been down for a few week in october, and a lot of players simply didn't want to play anymore without it. From what I've discussed, japanese players don't really know hom to hunt and track down a pokemon ""manually"", or at least don't want to go through that hassle. We still don't have the new pokestop-base sightings & nearby deployed in Japan. We still use the old sightings tab. Not sure why Niantic holds back on that, might be related to the tracker existence. Or maybe it's because there's too many pokestops.
There's a catch though. It isn't actually a complete tracker showing absolutely everything, it shows the grouped results of manual searches launched by the players, with a small cooldown on repeated searches. On a city like Tokyo, pretty much everything is covered since there's always players launching the search everywhere, and they don't care about sharing with rivals since pretty much everybody is anonymous in the gym scene.
Outside of Tokyo, less activity means less results. And there's the local gym rivalries to take in account and can be an incentive to not use such tracker. During Valentine I got 10 Chansey in one night biking through all the town (not Tokyo), while the tracker only showed one. Randomly encountered my 96% Chansey that way, and even though it might not be fair play, I definitely didn't want to share the loot with rivals, so no search spamming on that tracker.
===Interesting Places===
[[Category:Cities and Towns]] [[Category:Tōkyō-to]] [[Category:United States]]
