The Salaryman

The Tokyo Salaryman is a semi-mythical being. He’s someone who works a mostly unspecified corporate job. He is in the office until his boss leaves. He wears a dark suit and a white shirt and can often be found looking fairly exhausted on the city’s Hibiya Line. 

Our friend Shu Ikeuchi likes to joke that he is the ‘ultimate salaryman.’ A consultant and creative strategist with boundless energy, he wanted to take us on a tour of Shibuya after the boss has finally left the office. It’s when the whisky highballs begin to flow and cigarette smoke and dodgy karaoke singing fills the air. 

Wearing both his own Drake’s Madras tailoring and a heavy cotton Games suit, we tried to keep up as a Shu took us to his favourite record store, for a martini at the legendary Grandfathers cocktail bar, and to a decades-spanning, family-run sushi restaurant for Hokkaido crab and fresh fatty tuna sashimi. 

“I told you,” says Shu with a glint in his eye, “ultimate salaryman.”