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All the normal Gold medals - a small outlook from a player in Japan
Discussion
Sorry in advance if it's more a blog-like post than a real research post, but since I completed all the non-secret Gold medals and reached level 38 (Valor) the same week, I felt like doing a small statdump and review (I know a lot of player have already completed their medals). No Unown medal yet. Getting it and reaching level 40 is the next milestone for me.
Context
Biome
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, northen 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 colelct 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 surroudings make ~35 million of people, so there is still many players out there.
The engaged playerbase 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 abit 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 Tyranitars 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 are usually 4ssholes roadwise, they 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 prestiger, 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 Ampharos, 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 wih 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.
Some places of interest for PoGo players in Tokyo
Shinjuku
World's busiest train station with 3.64 million commuters on average weekday. No spawn point on the huge station (36 platforms, 200 exits !) itself. Probably removed on demand. But there's a lot of spawn points outside of the station. The area is mostly commerces, restaurants, offices, entertainment. It's a good place for urban pokemon like Porygon. You'll mostly be catching things while walking in these busy streets, so try to not bump into other people.
Yoyogi
A very large nest in west Tokyo, between Shinjuku and Shibuya. Directly out of the Harajuku station. You can usually catch 35 nest pokemon/hour (and not be able to go after every single one). Somehow, I always have a Snorlax spawning when I happen to go there. Often get a Farfetch'd too. Helped me a ton for Charmander and Growlithe candies since fire pokemons are a bit rare around here. A pond in the center will spawn a few Dratini during a farming session. A good number of pokestops too.
You can follow a looping footpath through the park. You can also cut anywhere in the park, but there isn't much footpaths to help to do so. Night falls early in Japan, so in december taking shortcuts (not lit areas) meant tripping every 4 meters on some tree root while farming Charmanders. By the way, the loud message repeating that skateboard/rollers are forbidden in the park and dangerous gets a bit annoying. You can't do it either in the street in Japan, but the cops will only tell you to not do it and you'll be fine if you stop. You usually only get warnings for minor offenses. In my home country, cops would usually fine you ~$50-$90 no matter what.
Shibuya
World's busiest crossing is there, with an estimated 2500 people crossing the street every time the green light switches on. It's also world's 4th busiest train station with 2.4 million passengers going through on weekdays. It's also well known because of the story of Hachjiko, the dog who waited 9 years in front of the station for his dead master to return. Mostly shops and fashionable things.
Thanks to Mc Donald and NTT Docomo's sponsorship, the Bic Camera building got many stops at the same place, and it's possible to reach 7 lures at once if you're at the right spot. It's a very popular lure spot, although it has fallen a bit out of grace since december because of the birth of a 9-lure spot in an another part of Tokyo. Still, it's in an interesting mix of biome, and the lures placed at Shibuya draw from the street, grass, water biome and from the rare mountain biome. If you're lucky, you can get both Dratini and Larvitar from these lures.
People often stand in front of the building or near the shop's entrance. The store employees never tell people to leave, although the swarm of players is obstructing the way. If the weather is too hot or too cold, you might rather enjoy the AC at Mc Donald. It's not unusual for players to just buy the cheapest things on the menu (usually a coffee) and then sit for hours inside. Even in busy hours, you never get kicked out of Mc Donald. Mc Donald is also quite popular with high school student, who buy french fries + drink and stay studying in group for hours, or passing business men who work on their laptops. Well, in the case of PoGo players you can argue that McDo wanted you in their shop with their sponsorship, so they got you sitting there. McDo Japan had actually been on falling profits in recent years because of a few food scandals, but their results have gotten better since last summer.
Meguro river
It's a good location to farm Dratini around Tokyo. The alleys along the river are very quiet in spit of being in the city, and there is some nice cherry blossoms in spring. Not that many people there, you get the occasional PoGo players, old ladies with their dogs, and people running. Sometimes there is some high school girls running too, not sure if it's part of their physical training or if it's because their coach told them to be uber polite to everybody, but they run and stop to bow and say "hello" everytime they come across somebody. I can't help but feel embarrassed to indirectly force them to stop by being there playing PoGo.
Pokemon clusters spawn all the way and there is always pokestops to spin. There is also a few small parks with nests on the side. Often encounter 5-6 Dratini per hour while grinding there. Even managed to encounter 6 Dratini in 5 minutes on a 25 meters section, one RNG lucky day. Actually, the abovementioned Shinjuku-Yoyogi-Shibuya and Meguro river are adjacent from north to south. So, someone up for a 3 hours walk can have a nice grind session through heavy street biome -> heavy grass biome + current massive nest -> mountain biome -> heavy water biome.
Ueno
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Shinobazu pond, the Dratini area ingame
A very large park in Tokyo. It was founded during the Meiji era (19th century), when Japan was opening to the western world. The northern part of the park has many trees and footpaths and is a large pokemon nest.
The southern part of the park (a road splits it in two) was extremely popular back in summer among Pogo players. It contains ponds with a temple in the center. The massive amount of spawn points meant a lot of Dratini. Hundreds of players were swarming the park in spite of the summer's 37 degrees Celsius and the humidity. The pokestops around the temple were constantly lured, spawning even more Dratini. But the issue was that PoGo players were completely blocking the access to the temple and to the food stalls nearby. Tourists could barely go through, no way to take good pictures, and hard access to food stalls.
In late september, it became forbidden to play in the temple area. Some players were still ignoring the messages though, or were just going through to trigger at lest the encounters. The pokestops have been removed since then. There is still Dratini, but it's not as interesting as it was back in summer, and this part of the park is now part of the nest rotations (the northen part was the only affected in summer), which means Dratini spawn points get ""cannibalized"" by nest species. I only farmed 3 times there in summer, but in the end the Meguro river gave me as much if not more Dratini per hour and was my daily grind anyway.
Kinshicho
Wasn't anything out of the norm until around november, but the new sponsorships added even more stops than before and it's now a 9-permalure spot (the multiple floors station and its shops helped). But it mainly draw from street/grass biome, so you might prefer the 7 lures at Shibuya for mountain biome.
Hibiya park
A good-sized nest, with a small pond that will spawn a few Dratini. Expect to catch around 20 nest species/hour. There is a lot of footpaths in every directions, making it easy to go around. Pokestops all over, you always have one to spin while walking. There's also a 4-5 close pokestops spot that is often lured. The Tokyo Christmas market is held there, so in december you had the bright Christmas market in the center, and PoGo players lurking in the dark around it to farm Jynx, who was the only practical way to get the ice medal in gen 1. Ice types are still very rare in tokyo in gen2, we don't really see wild Sneasel or Swinhub outside of nests.
Imperial Palace East Garden
A nest with a good spawn rate. Can get around 30 nest species/hour. Free entrance, but there is opening and closing hours. In this season, the place closes at 4:30pm and the last admission is at 3:45pm, so it's difficult to use if you work in weekdays. You're basically walking in a loop, with no shortcut possibilities. It's not that wide, so you're not going to miss any spawn.
Odaiba
An artificial island in the Tokyo Bay. Has a lot of shops, restaurants, entertainment utilities and exhibitions. There's also the Toyota City Showcase, where you can try cars, simulators and get a display of Toyota's technologies. People who are into manga probably know the Comicket, which is held at Odaiba's Big Sight. It's also home to the real size Gundam statue. It has been removed 2 weeks ago though, and will be replaced by an another Gundam model. Mostly a place for tourists though, Tokyo people are more likely to gather in other places during their spare time since Odaiba is a bit off the way.
Tokyo's area pokemon mecca. Most of the island get the rare mountain/desert biome but also the ocean biome, the electric biome. So a lot of Fighting types, Fire types, Seel, Shellder, Magnemite, Voltorb... Pokemon that are rarely seen in other parts of the Tokyo region, except in nests. And also a fair number of Dratini (not very rare in Tokyo though) and Pikachu/Porygon. Of course Larvitar, Tyranitar, Chansey, Miltank, Mareep, Lapras also spawn there. Unown has spawned multiple times too. Somehow, Swinhub and Drowzee spawn quite a lot there too, although there mostly no shows in other parts of Tokyo.
Lapras is a no-show in the Tokyo region outside of the Tokyo Bay, so Odaiba was THE place to go to get one. Took part in a ""Lapras dash"" in summer. Some guys ran across the beach screaming ""DETAAAAA"" (""appeared""), and all the players waiting Lapras on the beachside immediatly knew what they were talking about and started to run. Hundred of people running 1.5km to catch Lapras. Office ladies, salarymen, young girls, typical hardcore players. He was at a busy crossing and it ended with around a thousand people massed here to catch him. Some guy was on his knees screaming he was happy to be alive. An another guy was going berserk at his phone saying ""why error ? WHY ERROR ???"". Nowadays there isn't much people waiting for Lapras. Most players probably got one now (and there was the Lapras event), and he isn't much relevant anymore in the gym meta.
Note that most of the Tokyo bay gets the mountain biome for some reason, in spite of an almost sea level elevation. Odaiba is only 3.5m above the sea if I trust what was written on some toilets. Tokyo DisneySea is also the same biome mix as Odaiba, but buying tickets just to farm pokemon there would be quite expensive.
Odaiba is quite large, so the best way to go around is to use the rental bike service. It's quite cheap and you can return the bike at a lot of stations. It's electric bikes, a breeze to use. The place can also be rage inducing because some spawns appear right into the sea, impossible to reach. I once tried to get my first Larvitar there. One eventually spawned in the sea, near an elevated ridge. Many players (including myself) disregarded the security barrier and went as close to the border as possible, in spite of a slippery slope. No luck. But 10cm more and it was a straight 10 meters fall into the sea.
Akihabara
Known as a mecca for videogame, manga, animation and hobby stuff. But it's not much in PoGo in spite of what one might expect. Nothing really special, there's a lot of better places to play PoGo in Tokyo.
Comments about the medals :
Jogger: 2,551.6 km Imgur
Well, probably more than that in reality. Unfortunately, 1000km were spent with a Lapras buddy. But I then got almost the same amount of candies by going a few hours at the Lapras event, so I should have walked something else. Still, he was very useful in gyms all the time, so maybe it wasn't completely wasted. And now that Lapras got nerfed, these spare candies won't even be used for the once planned Lapras #2.
Kanto: 143 Imgur
No regionals except Farfetch'd. Last entry was Aerodactyl. Saw him once in my nearby while in the train and didn't got off at the station since I thought searching him would be too much of a hassle in an overcrowded area like Shibuya. I was sure I would had other chances but it never happened. Got him 2 months later in an egg, when I was already level 36.
Collector: 42,731 Imgur
These days I often grind 300-400 pokemon/day. My level isn't that high (38) considering some level 40 players caught less pokemon than that before reaching said level. But I don't buy lucky eggs and get incubators with gym coins, so my XP progress is a bit slow as a mostly F2P player.
Scientist: 2,350 Imgur
Pidgeotto, Raticate, Kakuna, Golduck, Metapod, Pidgeot and Slowbro make 72% of that.
Breeder: 807 Imgur
I usually only use the infinite incubator, and use gym coin bought incubators when I fill my inventory with 10km eggs. Which happened very rarely until gen 2. So, my count is very low. I often see people on this sub who are at a lower level and yet have hatched 1500 or even 3000 eggs, I guess they always run 9 incubators ?
Backpacker: 39,656 Imgur
Stops are everywhere in Tokyo. It often looks like that: [img]
Fisherman: 902 Imgur
Got the initial 200 Gold back in September. But at the time I wouldn't have imagined reaching a number like 902.
Battle Girl: 10,345 Imgur
Valor in a town where Mystic is the dominant team. I need to tear down everyday a few level 5-7 gyms rebuilt daily by Mystic if I want my coins.
Ace Trainer: 2,598 Imgur
Not much prestige to do. Gyms are often not Valor when I'm in my gym run. And when I conquer a gym, I rarely prestige it anymore since the empty spots will get filled by Pidgeys, ruining the prestige work. Yup, Mystic guys using alt accounts to fill empty spots in Valor gyms with useless stuff.
Youngster: 458 Imgur
Got it in december. Expected to get all the Gen 1 gold medals at that time, but a few poor nest migrations made it hard to complete the Ice and Fighting medals.
Pikachu Fan: 341 Imgur
Half done in nests, half done with the Santachu event.
Johto: 80 Imgur
Was far quicker than expected.
Schoolkid: 14,296 Imgur
Pidgey, Rattata, Pidgey, Eevee, Rattata, Pidgey, Rattata, Spearow, Pidgey, Rattata...
Black Belt: 232 Imgur
The final medal. Fighting types are quite rare in Tokyo. Completed it thanks to a Machop nest.
Bird Keeper: 8,026 Imgur
Pidgey/Spearow.
Punk Girl: 6,521 Imgur
Probably from the Grass/Poison types (a lot of them in Tokyo) and Nidorans
Ruin Maniac: 725 Imgur
It's currently at a high number, but it was amongst the latter half of completed medals. Ground type pokemon weren't so frequent in Tokyo, but the Halloween event and its Cubone spawns made it easier to complete the initial Gold Medal.
Hiker: 436 Imgur
Like Ground types, pure Rock types aren't that common in Tokyo. 2/3 of the initial 200 Gold Medal was done on Kabuto and Omanyte. Since there is a heavy water biome here, it was an easier way to do it (barring nests).
Bug Catcher: 4,217 Imgur
Many bug types in our grass biome. Paras, Venonat, Caterpie, Weedle... and now Spinarak and Ledyba.
Hex Maniac: 631 Imgur
Mostly due to the Halloween event.
Depot Agent: 274 Imgur
Not many Magnemites around in Tokyo, except in specific places in the Tokyo Bay, where they're as common as Pidgey. Basically went there and farmed until reaching 200.
Kindler: 626 Imgur
Fire types are a bit rare in Tokyo (like Fighting, Ground, and Rock, ). Most of the medal was done on nests (Magmar, Charmander, Growlithe) and event (Charmander).
Swimmer: 18,425 Imgur
Well, heavy water biome. So many Magikarp, Psyduck, Slowpoke...
Gardener: 3,080 Imgur
Bulbasaur, Chikorita, Oddish, Bellsprout, Exeggcute, Paras, Tangela are all over the place.
Rocker: 883 Imgur
Usually not much electric pokemon around here. A large part of the medal was done in Pikachu (nests, events) and Magnemite (in their pocket biome). But it's increasing since gen 2 because of Chinchou, who is only uncommon. Mareep is ultra rare though.
Psychic: 3,786 Imgur
Slowpoke and Exeggcute.
Skier: 207 Imgur
Ice pokemon are ultra-rare here. It was that way in gen 1, and gen 2 didn't change things. No Swinhub plague in Tokyo. I've caught 2 Swinhub since gen 2 release (and around 8k mons in the meantime). I've caught only 1 ""real wild"" Jynx in 40k pokemon, and that was in the abovementioned Odaiba, which has a very special set of overlapping biome. 43 points of the medal were done on Lapras thanks to the event, ~10 on Dewgong/Closyter, and ~150 by farming a Jynx nest multiple times. Said nest rotated during december before I had finished the medal. Luckily, 3 migrations later it came back at the same park.
Dragon Tamer: 1,050 Imgur
Never caught a wild Dragonite, but caught a lot of Dratini and Dragonair. I have a small river 150m behind my home, and it goes through an all-girl high school. The river spawn points seems to have been removed from the high school itself, but they are massed at the front and back entrances. When a Dratini appears on the sightings (a few times a day), I only need to hop on my bike and quickly check both entrances while trying to not look too suspicious.
My office is also ~10 meters away from a much larger river in Tokyo. There is a ton of spawn points, so Dratini aren't that rare there. Sometimes I can run into 7 Dratini during a 1 hour walk, without really looking for them. With Pinap berries, I usually get ~75 Dratini candies per day now. Had a good number of Dratini, Vaporeon and Gyarados spawning right at my desk too.
Taking a Dratini buddy is an absolute no in my case, but Larvitar got buddied right away and is already at 400km done in 2 weeks. They're very rare here.
Delinquent: 330 Imgur
Murkrows everywhere. Houndours are around too, but not nearly as frequent as the birds. The only non-nest Sneasel I saw was from a lure.
Fairy Tale Girl: 487 Imgur
Not many fairies. Actually got ~50 done during 1 day at the Lapras event since the event place happened to be a mountain biome (a Dragonite also spawned that day). Most of the Fairy medal was done while grinding lures at Shibuya, which happens to have a pocket mountain biome. But it's now rising quickly because of Marril.
Spawns
edit: the post is far too long for reddit's limit, will split a part in a topic reply
Valentine event
Tokyo was mostly plagued with Lickitung and the already common Slowpoke and Exeggcute. Lot of Porygon in the central parts too. Not so much Chansey unless you went to the small mountain biome areas. Barely saw any Clefairy.
Farfetch'd
I randomly come across 2 Farfetch'd a week, they're definitely uncommon. There doesn't seem to be a set biome for them, they were in streets or parks, where you would expect Pidgey/Rattata. No sure way to find them, but the best way to do it is probably to stay at the 9-lure in Kinshicho or at the 7-lure in Shibuya and stay a few hours, hoping that the number of spawns will eventually help to roll it. Often got 1 during lure farming sessions.
Drowzee, Swinhub, Tangela
These 3 pokemon are apparently latitude-based (but not latitude-locked like Corsola). We never got any Drowzee plague in Tokyo, apart from Halloween spawns, and Swinhub is a rarity unless you go to a nest or to Odaiba (which has everything anyway). On the other hand, Tangela is only uncommon-rare, you randomly run into a few every week. From what I've read from people living in Drowzee-Swinhub zones, Tangela seems ultra rare for them.
Dratini, Dragonair
As mentioned before, streams of all size everywhere, so Dratini isn't really rare. Everybody has Dragonites. There is specific places to optimize Dratini farming such as Shinobazu Pond in Ueno or Meguro river, but you can otherwise catch some of them anywhere.
Dragonite
Fully evolved Dragonite is quite rare due to the lack of mountain biome in the Tokyo area. Spawns in the pocket mountain biome, like Shibuya (unfrequently) or almost everyday at Shinagawa station. Somehow, not that much in Odaiba, which makes me think that Shibuya-Shinagawa mountain biome (with Dragonites and Clefairies) and Tokyo Bay mountain biome (with common mountain spawns but not so much Clefairies/Dragonites) are actually different things in spite of sharing most of their pokemon pool.
Snorlax
Snorlax isn't so rare in the region. Can often be found around train stations thanks to the amount of street biome spawn points. Often in Yoyogi park too. Even had 5 spawn directly on my home. Got my first Snorlax by following into a back alley 2 guys who seemed ultra excited. Turned out they were indeed looking for a Snorlax.
Lapras
For the Tokyo area, Lapras seems to only spawn in the Tokyo Bay and nowhere else. Waiting at Odaiba is the best bet.
Miltank, Mareep, Aerodactyl, Chansey, Larvitar family
Very rare. Mostly spawn in the pocket mountain biome like Shibuya, Shinagwa, Tokyo Bay (Odaiba, DisenySea...). Aerodactyl seems more frequent around Shibuya and Shinagawa than it is in Odaiba. And the Larvitar family shows up much more in Shinagawa and the Tokyo Bay than it does in Shibuya. Same for Mareep.
Unown
Has spawned multiple times already at Odaiba and in DisneySea. Also spawned at least once in Shinjuku. Its own tier of rare. Since there is an Unown-dedicated twitter feed in Japan, some japanese player with too much free time on his hand will probably complete the gold medal in a few weeks.
My maxed lineup
Just in case somebody asks. Hope it doesn't make the thread a bragpost. Playing in Tokyo is a bit like being on easy mode anyway (many nests, rare candies, tons of spawns and pokestops for XP/dust grinding), so it's not impressive considering that. It's the ones at level 39, not always the highest CP in the collection (many of them actually have non maxed Gyarados above them CP-wise)
| Pokemon | CP | IV | Quick move | Charge move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragonite | 3530 | 100% | Dragon Tail | Hyper Beam |
| Dragonite | 3522 | 98% | Dragon Breath | Dragon Pulse |
| Dragonite | 3521 | 98% | Steel Wing | Hyper Beam |
| Dragonite | 3513 | 96% | Steel Wing | Dragon Claw |
| Dragonite | 3512 | 96% | Dragon Breath | Dragon Claw |
| Dragonite | 3505 | 93% | Steel Wing | Hyper Beam |
| Dragonite | 3505 | 96% | Steel Wing | Dragon Pulse |
| Dragonite | 3488 | 82% | Dragon Breath | Hyper Beam |
| Dragonite | 3486 | 89% | Dragon Breath | Dragon Claw |
| Dragonite | 3485 | 89% | Dragon Breath | Hyper Beam |
| Dragonite | 3485 | 89% | Steel Wing | Dragon Pulse |
| Snorlax | 3238 | 76% | Zen Headbutt | Body Slam |
| Snorlax | 3231 | 76% | Lick | Body Slam |
| Rhydon | 3224 | 91% | Mud Slap | Earthquake |
| Gyarados | 3188 | 87% | Dragon Breath | Hydro Pump |
| Blissey | 3160 | 96% | Zen Headbutt | Dazzling Gleam |
| Vaporeon | 3092 | 93% | Water Gun | Hydro Pump |
| Vaporeon | 3076 | 89% | Water Gun | Aqua Tail |
| Espeon | 2958 | 100% | Confusion | Futuresight |
| Alakazam | 2845 | 100% | Psycho Cut | Dazzling Gleam |
| Exeggutor | 2840 | 91% | Zen Headbutt | Solar Beam |
| Machamp | 2831 | 96% | Counter | Close Combat |
| Flareon | 2830 | 91% | Fire Spin | Overheat |
| Machamp | 2829 | 96% | Counter | Close Combat |
| Arcanine | 2776 | 93% | Fire Fang | Fire Blast |
| Jolteon | 2666 | 91% | Thunder Shock | Thunder |
| Charizard | 2599 | 89% | Wing Attack | Fire Blast |
| Lapras | 2488 | 80% | Frost Breath | Blizzard |
| Umbreon | 1999 | 93% | Feint Attack | Foul Play |
Well, I intended to write a small review of my medals + species statdump and ended digressing and writing a much longer review. Kinda became a tourism/tokyo playguide. Maybe it makes the thread more interesting. I don't think many will actually read that wall of text. Since english isn't my main language, this wall of text might be painful to read.
tl;dr: Tokyo is mostly grass/water/street biome, not much mountain/desert biome.
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Spawns
split from the main post
Real wild = catches from pokemon that spawned in the wild Excludes nests, events, hacthed eggs and evolutions.
Actual Catch % = actual catches (real wild+event+nests) divided by actual pokemon seen in the wild (real+event+nests minus 1 if the pokemon was seen in gym first )
Spinarak, Murkrow and Sentret already make it into the top 25 of caught wild spawns. Woo-hoo.
Imgur 21801 Magikarp candies. Enough to evolve 54 more Gyarados.
Starters distribution
Using the ""real wild"" spawn numbers
This is incredible! I started trying to sort out which of my pokemon were caught, which were evolved, hatched, etc. and it got to be overwhelming. How do you keep track? If you catch hundreds a day do you have a paper/pen with you to write down everything that happens?
Keeping track of caught things would be a pain, so I rather keep track of what wasn't caught "naturally".
I don't hatch much eggs with since I usually use the infinite incubator only, so keeping track of this manually isn't too much work. For nests I remember how much I farmed. I remember evolutions too, although it's a rough +/- 25 estimate on the likes of Pidgeys/Rattata. I kept track of what spawns were unusual during events.
Up votes because that's a hell of a lot of varied information.
I really just loved reading a view on Japanese culture, both PoGo and general stuff. Insightful thanks.
Fantastic post, i feel like the behavour of players and the gyms are very similar for any big city.
On the tracker aspect of it. Here in Sydney, Australia it's not considered cheating. In the Sydney subreddit you will often get the answer to questions about where to find something with "check the tracker"..
I will often have two trackers going on different pages. One with the rares I want and one with all pokemon above 97%.
what trackers lol? I have trouble finding one that works..
This is amazing work. Thank you for this contribution.
Thank you for your thorough and well written post.
It is always interesting to read about the differences in regions and play styles, especially the differences in stats for an F2P player at level 38.
F2P here, also Level 38 but I only buy lucky eggs, would people be interested for a post?
You understand F2P means FREE to play right?
From gym coins, may be?
Yes, I never bought coins with real life money and I only use the gyms coins that I earn to buy lucky eggs
Holy crap my dude, lol this has to be the longest post Iv seen, probably take me a good hour or two to read through it lol. But awesome data! I see great dedication in you!
You misspelled, "Only in Japan."
Makes me feel like a dirty old man.
Edit: Finally finished reading, and it's really awesome, seeing another city through the eyes of the Pokemon Go player:) Makes me want to visit there. I could probably write a similar story about my town, but the scale of it all would be so much smaller.
Please do. It would be so interesting to read about Pokémon Go in other places.
Holy crap. Over 6000 Magikarp. That's insane. I've been playing since day 1 and I see them quite often here, and I'm only at 650
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I'm at 92. I should get to the gold in about 2 and a half years 😂
I enjoyed reading that, not least because Japan is one of my favourite places to travel! You sound humble, and obviously recognise you have a huge advantage because of where you play. But it still must've been a grind, well done one doing all that without really cheating (scanner aside)!
E: typo
Great post! One of the better posts I've read lately. I have one question though, in your spawn table, you mention nest/event/'real wild' seperately. Is this just an estimation or did you write down all your catches and where they came from? Or am i missing something?
I was wondering the same thing. This is some next level data.
He answered in another post that it's just a guess. He doesn't actually keep track of it.
No, I said that instead of keeping track of everything (real wild + nest + event + evolved + eggs) , I only keep track of what isn't really a real natural spawn (nest + event + evolved + eggs), getting the "real wild" number is just substracting it from the ingame "caught #".
For evolutions though, it's mostly memory, I remember well how many evolutions I did for almost all species except the mass evolution ones (pidgey/rattata/weedla/caterpie), whoch may have some error margin in them.
That's literally the definition of not keeping track :P
WOW! Thanks for all the info and everything. I should be going to Tokyo soon, and can't wait to see what it's like. I live in a fairly small town. A blip compared to Tokyo, but more than just 1 gas station and bar. Unfortunately it sounds like we have similar biomes overall. There are absolutely no fire/ground types to be found here (at least from all my exploration) I live on Lake Michigan so PLENTY of water types. But with Tokyo being so big and more spawns, the chances of some nice things showing up are good. I'm quite excited because we can play PoGo at any time of day, it doesn't matter and that is good considering how the city mostly shuts down fairly early. I'm also a night owl. I need that farfetch'd and I hope for a random encounter on my way to get a katsudon! I have a GO+ and I can't wait to see all the surprises I'll end up with after hopping on a train or randomly hitting it when I don't have a chance look at my phone.
tl;dr - Thanks for all the info, can't wait to play in Tokyo soon!
This is such an awesome post, such is the way I was in Tokyo (and Kyoto and Nessico) two weeks ago and would have loved to had this knowledge at the time. Brings back the thrill of the hunt going for a region specific on a time frame, caught two farfetch'd so can't complain and was on holiday so didn't want to be locked into pogo. Tokyo was really something else as a city and as a pogo experience. -Lvl 31 Valour London UK
Tokyo is my favorite place on earth. Having Pokémon GO only makes it that much better. I still live with the feelings of 'you never know what's going to show up' can't wait to see it happen in Tokyo.
Wow, this ranks right up there with the most awesome post ever.
The amount of work put into this, amazing.
The statistics, amazing.
Just incredible.
Anyone going to Japan should find this post he ultimate knowledge base.
I now wonder what a LARGE outlook would be since this was just a small one.
your tl;dr got a good LOL out of me - doesn't even come close to summarizing your post!
This was a great read, thoughtful and interesting to see your experience! I think it's wonderful to see this sort of thing from time to time, a "perspective" post. Thanks for this!
Haha i LOL'd too
Compared to my collector/scientist ratio, you don't seem to evolve much. Is that due to an intentional savings for double XP event or something else?
Edit: for reference my Collector/Scientist: 17,859/2,349
I've already used all my lucky eggs, so no more mass evolution. I'm not really trying to save candies, but now I only auto evolve commons that have at least 82% IV, and usually throw them away after.
Since I'm always above 900 pokemon storage, I'm also trying to not evolve too many rare spawns I wouldn't have the heart to throw away after a moveset failure. Now I'll only evolve an uncommon/rare spawn if it's at least 93%, which doesn't happen that much.
Also curious on this since I've been doing the same thing ;-). Great post btw!
Thumbs up for a super detailed and interesting post! I'll be travelling to Japan with my boyfriend next month, staying in Tokyo right at the start of our one month long trip, and will definitely check out many of the spots you have mentioned.
Great review.
Wow this post is a keeper!! I can imagine re-reading it multiple times in the future.
Yeah I saved it – if I ever go to Japan this post will be a guide for sure.
This reflects almost my exact experience, as well. Just a quick look at some of the numbers shows that they're within +/-10% of mine.
It's a blessing and a curse to play in Tokyo since all the serious players have access to the same resources and rare mons (i.e. using the tracker to find dratini family, snorlax, etc.).
what tracker please?
Tracker only works in Japan.
There's maps for a lot of cities if you know where to look and personal tracking still works if you pay a few bucks a month.
Hi, great post. I'm playing in Central Tokyo. I have a few observations to add.
Odaiba is still the place to hunt rares, and Lapras is far from dead for Japanese. I got to a Lapras spawn basically as the first on Saturday, we video recorded the half hour rush of people, 1000+ came to that single spot to get it. It is still the single most hunted Pokémon for Japanese, with Larvitar coming in second. People will still rush for Dratini. Mareep is a rush as well. Mareep spawns frequently in Odaiba.
Ginza area had the best spawns for Chansey during the Valentines event, it was possible to pick 50+ a day there. The place was a crazy mess.
I don't feel like being left out as an outsider. I made many foreign and Japanese friends, and especially the Japanese are sharing loads of information (but through private talks).
I was at Odaiba 2 weeks ago on the last night of the Gundam statue. I was surprised there's still so many Pokemon Go players in Tokyo. The beach side is packed with people hunting Dratini. Stream of people is moving in between Dratini spawn points. People rush to Larvitar when it appears on tracker. Cars and cabs parked on the side road near the park entrance where Larvitar appeared. It's a relatively good place for Larvitar. I caught 3 in half a day.
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Shoot me a PM if you wanna hunt together.
I caught Unown and Lapras in Odaiba yesterday. Larvitar does not spawn in Ginza.
When I go to Odaiba it's usually on friday evenings, and it seemed a bit dead the last month compared to what it was on september fridays. Of course there was still PoGo players, but the weather didn't help I guess.
I've never tried to play PoGo there during the weekend though. From what you say, there is still a lot of activity at that time of the week.
Got a few Mareep everytime, and people are indeed looking for it. As for Dratini, I'm always disappointed when I follow a crowd and the discover it was "only" for a Dratini, but that's just me being spoiled by the river biomes I'm usually playing in =).
Incredible amount of data and info about locations in Japan, really enjoyed reading and looking.
I'd trade you any of my 12 wild Aerodactyl spawns for any of your 12 wild Gyarados spawns. So interesting seeing the disparity of rare spawns between regions/biomes, especially given the difference in total Pokémon caught.
"It has been removed 2 weeks ago though, and will be replaced by an another Gundam model." ;_;
You have done an excellent job!.
I want more of this from other countries (cities)! I just want to read about the Pokemon culture of other places.
Anyone from S.Korea who is interested?
I would be curious about knowing how the game plays out in other parts of the world.
I'm going to Japan in a month, still no Unown, what is the twitter feed link or handle so I can check it out when I'm there. Thank you!
Also curious.
Ya don't say...
I will be looking forward for your big outlook
Nice post and awesome info.
Pogotuga sempre presente!
Good read!
Amazing post!
Holy hell, I'm gonna save this reddit as I will be in Tokyo for few days soon. 78 Snorlaxs!!!!! Do you have any experience in the situation in Fukuoka and Osaka? Anyway amazing review thanks!
Hi, not OP but I live in Osaka. Have any specific questions? Also shockingly Osaka Castle's nest is gone this migration! That was such a hot catching area, but you'd need pocket wifi. Otherwise if you stick to stations and sone shopping areas you can pick up free tourist wifi, like at Osaka Station. The area around Osaka station and Doutonbori are full of stops and lures :) And you have to go to the Pokemon Center there unless you go to Ikebukuro's in Tokyo ;)
Also unrelated to Pokemon, but I assume you're here for cherry blossom season, it'll be so beautiful, have fun!!!
Actually no, I'll be in Japan for Golden Week and the week after: aiming at the flowering in Hitachi Seaside Park, Shibazakura and hopefully Kawachi Fuji garden as well.
I was in Osaka in November and found the pokemon situation rather underwhelming, especially Dotonbori: nothing special and no lures or anything. Maybe it was a bad day...
Sorry, I misread your post as 'I'll be in Tokyo in a few days'. I've seen the Shibazakura in Chichibu twice! It's lovely! One time it was cloudly and the mountain was hideen but the second time was baking! No shade though, I got sunburned. Some bonus farm animals there too.
Sorry you got unlucky with Osaka!
Lol you're right, "few days" seems way off. More than a month actually.
Awesome to hear I can't wait to see Shibazakura myself!!!
Is Osaka getting the same kind of biome as Tokyo ? Do you know about Kyoto's biome too ? It's pretty mountainous aorund Kyoto, so I guess they must have a lot of Mareep/Larvitar.
I actually don't know about biomes (please don't call me a filthy casual!) and a google search led me here: https://pokemongohub.net/pokemon-go-biomes/ I'd say Osaka is either Grass or Bush but there are so few Weedles and Spearow I can't tell which. I haven't seen a wild Clefairy here in Osaka that I can remember so I wpupdn't call it Mountain but I do see Nidoran here and there. And I'm afraid I haven't been to Kyoto since GO was released.
No PoGo experience in Fukuoka or Osaka, but as a tourist, I remmeber the Umeda station in Osaka to be a labyrinth =)
Amazing! Very interesting! Really useful for travelers to Japan.
Nice good read, good job.
Great post.
wow. Just wow
Makes me want to visit Tokyo! ;) My town write up would be very short: 1 pokestop, 1 gym. Battles between Mystic, Instinct, and Valor on a weekly rotating basis. Winter put a chill on things. Fortunately I work in a nearby small city but nothing on the scale of Tokyo.
How do you even walk around while being surrounded by all those people just standing there lmao, those pics look nice though
What a fantastic post.
I lived in Tokyo (Musashimurayama-shi) last year and would have loved to have played PokémonGo while I was there. I used to take the Seibu-Shijuku line, or Chuo line (from Tachikawa) to get into Tokyo central. Man it would've been great!
Sometimes back here at home I drop a scanner on parks I used to go to, to check what's the nesting spawn and imagine myself sitting on the park bench chuckin' balls and listening to the cicadas singing.
Thanks man, this was much appreciated, I'll vicariously live through this post until I move back!
Great post!
I'm also a player in Japan, but probably not nearly as active and I don't live in Tokyo. I can confirm your comments about Swinub, Drowzee, and Tangela being latitude based. I live in northern Japan and my neighborhood is overrun with Swinub and Drowzee, although much fewer now after Gen 2 arrived. Tangela, meanwhile, is very rare and has only ever spawned for me when I've been walking around in the city center rather than out in the suburbs.
I think my suburban biome is mostly water and Mt. Moon because Clefairy and Eevee pop up like daisies and like you, my home is very close to a small river.
Unfortunately I didn't discover that everyone and their mom used a tracker until recently so I had a really hard time finding my spawn points before then. Turns out all of the spots Dratini/Majikarp appear are in stupid off-the-beaten-path areas that I never would have known to walk past. I only just recently evolved my first Gyrados and Dragonite for that reason.
Mareep and Larvitar are both pretty rare here but I've been fortunate enough to have several pop up in my neighborhood. I'm still a ways from getting a Tyranitar though even though I've had a Larvitar as my buddy since I caught it.
This is probably the fourth time I've seen that it's apparently super common for people in Japan to use trackers, but no one ever says what tracker(s) they use. Which ones still work in Japan? I thought all trackers were shut down?
-Curious American
Because we are not supposed / allowed to discuss the greater details of trackers - and everyone in Japan know the tracker anyway.
Seriously, this is a great read. You know how to capture great details.
What do you mean by "non-secret" medals? Are there secret medals?
Getting one of each Unown is a secret medal
What makes that one secret? How is it different from the other medals?
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Isn't that how all of the medals work? For instance, we couldn't see the Delinquent medal until catching a dark pokemon last month despite the medal existing in the code since launch.
Ah, I thought the unknown one was different. I was playing when gen 2 was triggered and my first gen 2 catch was a Murkrow, so I didn't notice you weren't supposed to see the Dark medal until you got a Dark pokemon.
That's how all the medals work
Wow.... Thank you for all the information! Specially the popular hunting locations. I travel to Tokyo yearly and I always just went hunting to Odaiba, really... Always felt the atmosphere there is quite amazing. There's something comforting about being surrounded by people that enjoy the same as you ;)
Post saved for future reference for my trip later this year, thanks again!
Regarding the topic on trackers, for us in SG, we also had an extremely comprehensive tracker website which not only shows the location and time-remaining, but even the movesets and IVs ( and u can even filter based on IVs....). We also had telegram groups for high IV ( or purely 100% ) pokemons, various hotspots groups etc.
My own anecdotal evidence does indicate that most players do use it, and dun really feel that it's a direct form of "cheating". Moreover, it satisfied the 2 main criteria which makes it soooo popular in SG...1stly, being free, and 2ndly, triggered the "Kiasu-ism" ( ie afraid of losing out ) culture here in SG....Moreover, we dun expect such trackers to last forever, so there's this "no-harm-using-it-while-it-last" attitude to it. PS, this tracker is still surviving somehow and even expanded into other cities in some countries.....
Being a small city state, SG is even smaller than Tokyo or other major cities, so accessing these pokemons are actually extremely easy, especially with the tracker, regardless of spoofing or not. Definitely, spoofing is quite rampant here in SG too ( personally encountered alot during my gym battles ), but I'm also not too surprised if pple here had alot of good IV and rare pokemons if they caught it via the non-spoofing way.
There are alot of FB posts with pple sharing pics on places crowded with cars whenever a rare/good IV/good moveset pokemon appeared.
Thus, for us in SG, we had it extremely lucky in terms of Pokemon GO, both in the spawns, pokestops, gyms and the accessibility ( pretty easy to get around here in SG ), with the comprehensive tracker to boot.
That's so sad, you have a big city with many good nest and a wide variety of rare Pokemon everywhere but you cannot play in gyms at all.
I'm not the kind of infinite grind player but playing in gyms is the best aspect of the game for me. That's why mid-size town with many gyms and countryside hidden spots are the best places to play.
How the hell do people spend this much time researching? Don't you have a life out there? This isn't the MLG you get paid for man! It'd be nice and research is rad, but save yourself the headaches!
"From what I've read from people living in Drowzee-Swinhub zones, Tangela seems ultra rare for them."
Can confirm this, Finland is full of Drowzee and Swinhub (Jynx too) but Tangela is more rare than Larvitar/Mareep/Dragonite/Lapras/Snorlax/Lickitung/Porygon...
Can also confirm - London is Swinub Central and had masses of Drowzee until the Halloween event, but I've never seen a wild Tangela and it was my last Gen I pokemon (a much-anticipated hatch just after Christmas). They do seem to very occasionally spawn in our mountain biomes of Greenwich and Hampstead Heath, but they're miles away from me.
This tracker business is so frustrating. Niantic either need to provide one for everyone or come down on them hard, including sending a notification to all players explicitly stating that using trackers is not allowed. There's plenty of good stuff around where I live but I don't have the time to manually map them out and keep track of changes etc.; when I'm out walking I just have to hope something good appears at random. I can't even triangulate cause of the useless "Nearby" list containing 1-2 Pokemon, pushing very rare pokemon off the list so I have no idea if it's still there. I was considering investing time in it, but why bother when there are trackers? If I could use a tracker, then I could use my time far more effectively by going for what I wanted and not wasting time wandering aimlessly catching commons.
People can pipe up all they want about "but don't worry about what other people do!!!" well, that's just BS. While my wife and I are ahead of our local meta due to playing a lot in the city at the start of gen 1, we are absolutely nowhere close to the level of people living in metropolises. By itself, this is not a problem since its just urban vs rural, but the frustrating part is that it's wildly exacerbated by the fact that scanners function very well in cities since there's so many people there, and are barely usable in rural areas for similar reasons. I want to complete the content to a reasonable level before the next lot is released, and not have to worry about struggling to play catch up the whole time and I don't think that's unreasonable.
Edit: though I'm being negative, thank you for your detailed wrap up of your area. I guess I'm (and a lot of others) are just given the short stick.
I'm sickened by how many magikarp and dratini you caught. We are playing a different game. I don't live in a big city, but even if I did, the closest one doesn't spawn that much of either one. 7 in an hour is stupid. This is the first game where geography matters and each player has a different experience, but this is night and day. I feel demoralized how much better the game is for you. I guess I'll just deal with it, not compare with others, and be glad if I find one dratini a week. I guess this is like real life, some are more fortunate than others.
I really dislike how they make spawns and spawn points based on the number of players. Rare for one is common for another. That's just... sad.
Basing spawns on cellphone data usage like Ingress is a great flaw of PoGo.
When I started the game and didn't have a clue about how all of that worked, my first hunch was to hop on my bike and go on my town's outskirts, across the fields, near electrical pylons (seemed a good place for Pikachu -- but nothing actually spawned) and around some large isolated lake.
Well, pretty much nothing in the nature, where you would expect pokemons. Everything was in town. Even that big lake didn't give more than 1 Magikarp and a few Rattata, while the 7 meters wide small river behind my home spawns Dratini, Omanyte, Kabuto and a lot of Magikarps.
Yah, it makes the game very different. I live in a college town, which has been very quiet, picked up a little, and now is very quiet. I didn't even think about the disparity between the average user and this person in Japan until I read how many dratinis they got. Very rare spawns being common is... upsetting. I don't expect the game to be fully balanced, but at least not this unbalanced!
I'm going to Japan in a month, still no Unown, what is the twitter feed link or handle so I can check it out when I'm there. Thank you!
As someone going to Tokyo next week and hoping to catch Farfetch'd, amongst others, thanks so much for posting this! Although your snarky remark about people with too much time on their hands seems ironic.
As someone living in rural Japan, this felt like a big "f you" (I know it actually wasn't of course)
As someone who appreciates a lot of details / showing your work, I am very impressed.
Wow, what an incredible wealth of information. Thank you for sharing!
Hey there! I love the post you provided! I just have one question for you: What exactly is a tracker? Also, what makes a tracker different from a regular pokemon go player? What tools do thwy use to help them catch pokemon?
A tracker is a map that shows where the pokemons are. Trackers are always getting their data using scanner bots who look what spawns where. It's a clear TOS violation from the person running the bots. As for players (not running bots) looking at the data displayed said maps, it's a very controversial topic here, but usually considered outright cheating.
In the case of Japan, there is 1 tracker website used by all players. Even the casualest of casuals use it, and it's not frowned upon among players. So, in the local meta it's not seen as cheating as everydbody uses it and has access to the same advantages. But it doesn't show absolutely everything unlike some trackers for other big cities (almost every big city in the workd has a local tracker). The japan one only shows the grouped results from searches triggered manually. That's still a huge advantage, but it's very possible to find by yourself rares that never were displayed on the tracker.
In my experience, it seems like this subreddit is the only group of people that hate the use of trackers. Everyone in my hometown uses them and most aren't even aware that it breaks the TOS (like your area I'm sure). I was 'against' them myself until the change from regular sightings to pokestop sightings in the ingame tracker (all the pokestops near me are across a broken bridge, so now everything on my 'nearby' is completely inaccessible by walking or driving, across the broken bridge where all the stops are, and I can't even see what's actually nearby to me...).
Thank you very much OP! As someone moving to Tokyo in a weekbthis is invalueable
Great post. I just recently got back to Tokyo after spending sometime in Europe, basically "started" playing this game, only level 26 but having a blast compared to playing in rural land.
I loved reading this! It did intrigue me that you said there was a lapras event, and I read you just had a snorlax one too. How often do you have events like this? Aside from the all pink event and Halloween etc.
Well, both of those were actually put on to bring people to areas affected by natural disasters.. I'd hope you don't have to have one lol
There were just those 2
Excellent post. Question for OP. What would be desirable from your end once trading hits? Might make make a Japan trip once trading comes.
Aside from the obvious Unown, I would gladly trade Dragonites for Tyranitars :D.
Could you link that unown twitter account, I'm in Japan for the next couple weeks and I would love to find one.
Thanks v much for posting! As an all legit 40 in Hong Kong, we have a similar situation. Many here use 3rd party trackers, have multi-accounts and don't think it's cheating (I do and take pride I don't use them or spoof). I'm visiting Tokyo next week and will use your insights!
Here, only trackers are not considered cheating. Multi accounts and everything described in the "cheating" part are frowned upon. Congrats for level 40. I imagine there is a ton of spawns too in a city like Hong Kong, and probably a crazy gym turnover.
Thanks, and yep, we all got our own views of what's cheating. One of my fav YouTubers (BenTimm1) I follow that I enjoy watching uses trackers.
Ya gym turnovers in HK is crazy high. Most gyms change within 1-10mins. But I do have a regular area in which I strategically battle. Usually 1st gym I train up to lvl 5-7 and place my highest Dragonite. Then 2nd gym I train up to lvl 4 and place my highest Snorlax. Then 3rd gym I quickly place my highest Blissey. Then 4th gym I place my 2nd highest Dragonite. Usually get 30-40 coins daily this way. How's your gym scene?
Very interesting read!
Just for comparison with the Little Tokyo on the Rhine:
Biome similarities: similar street/grass/water biomes, but we get much less water (and a bit less grass). No fire, no rock, no ground (except for Swinub), no fighting, no Clefairy/Snubbull/Aerodactyl/Dragonite, no Mareep as well.
Biome differences: 1) no way we get more Dratini or Slowpoke than Staryu/Poliwag/Goldeen but it's still interesting that Staryu, Poliwag and Goldeen are in the same proportions; 2) Northern biome: Tangela is as rare as Unown but Swinub is as common as Murkrow. We also get more Seel/Shellder/Jynx/Drowzee/Gastly/Lapras, but less Sunkern/Houndour/Slugma/Scyther/Bulbasaur/Sandshrew and I still have to see a "Real Wild" Pinsir, Ekans or Snorlax.
Nests: we have 8 "usable" nests (>10/hour) in a 1.2 million inhabitants urban area. For visitors to the NRW capital city, they are: Rheinpark, Hofgarten, Volksgarten, Zoopark, Am Pappelwäldchen, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring, Stadtgarten, Rosengarten.
Weather: absolutely comfortable (when it's not raining) between April and September, kind of OK in March, October and November, very cold (often below 0°C and often windy) in December, January and February. However, there are still some people playing (we're used to the cold weather): in the weekend after Gen2 launch, I lost almost all my gyms.
I'm totally F2P and I have hatched 600+ eggs and I'm only level 32. I usually run the infinite incubator + 1 or 2 incubators depending on how gyms are going. What else should I spend gym coins on?
Interestingm didn't know about the Little Tokyo. For the water biome, there is apparently multiple types of water biome, and the Magikarp/Psyduck/Slowpoke one is clearly the biome with the greatest Dratini spawn chance. Staryu/Poliwag/Goldeen don't even come close to Slowpoke's numbers in this biome.
I live in Tokyo too! What is this Japanese online tracker you speak of? It would be nice to know what Pokémon come out after each nest migration at all the big parks in town. Thanks for your incredible post!
Taipei is more or less the same as how you described Tokyo. It was pretty similar while I played in Osaka and Kyoto as well although Kyoto has way lesser players and spawn points.
"I highly suspect them of being the ones who have vandalized 2 of my bikes too, but that's an another story."
How about you vandalizing their phones in return? That would kill all their alt accounts until they can get new phone.
Oh jeez...I played in Ueno Park when I went to Tokyo for vacation in September. I played from 18th - 22nd. It seems that I got to see the very end of the time that you were allowed to play there.
Very sad :( I hope that I didn't contribute to the stops being removed. I will say that I was playing there for days before I looked up and noticed the park was amazing on its own. I love this game but one downside is that sometimes it does stop you from noticing the real world.
Thanks for the write up and congrats!
What an awesome post. Thank you.
Amazing post. I've been playing in Japan since launch too.
I'm out in Kagoshima, and I seriously think we have the most eclectic biome match up in all of Pokemon Go. The city is as shallow as Tokyo, and it's surrounded by steep hills to the north south and west, and a body of water (and a volcano) to the east. Perhaps similar to Tokyo, desert biome is the least common.
I'm not as hard core as other people playing in my area due to my heavy work schedule, but I'm slowly getting to level 30. Thought I would go over my medals as well- not nearly the sample size but ... why not.
Total Pokemon: 5104 Schoolkid: 2010 Bird Keeper: 1392 Punk Girl: 1452 Bug Catcher: 804 Swimmer: 1019 Gardener: 664 Psychic: 255 Fairy Tale Girl: 218 Ruin Maniac: 178 Hiker: 83 Kindler: 163 Rocker: 101 Black Belt: 28 Hex Maniac: 45* Depot Agent: 25 Dragon Tamer: 21 Delinquent: 40 Skier: 3*
My new commute to work has taken me into the mountains by bus. Even so, the spawns are mostly grass types and not so many rock / ground types, although Sudowoodo has changed that recently. Water types seem to be the most common, but particularly along the river (which is between my apartment and the city center). Grass types are also very common. Lastly, there are plenty of Clefairies- even without the event I was over 210... I just ignored the majority of them during the valentine event.
This was a doozy of a post, but it was well written and very interesting. Thank you for putting in the time to write this all out.
Omedeto! Fantastic writeup - thanks for the detailed analysis and data. My mind - and my tendency to write a long post like this with lots of different tangents - is similar to yours. Forms a complete picture of the situation. I also have a huge amount of analysis that I've done from the data I've collected from the game, and have at least a dozen spreadsheets analyzing everything from XP composition, Stardust composition, catch composition, etc. I often wish the game gave you a way to access all of your data - or, at least, data for the last day/week, etc. I love analyzing this stuff.
Also, your timing is so coincidental - I was sitting down at the keyboard just now to write a very similar post after finishing the type medals this weekend. I'm also L38, but the key difference between our play styles is that I do buy coins while also maintaining a steady 10 gyms per day, so it's interesting to see how F2P and pay-something-and-play differ. I can share more data, but briefly, my Pokemon data is as follows:
... so it's neat to see how the composition of our respective XP has differed.
The post I was intending to make was about how well the Youngster medal scales with trainer level, but I see from your post that dedicated grinding means that you can reach Youngster far earlier. My analysis of Youngster:
Interestingly, at this XP/day rate, it suggests that I'll hit L40 in 119 days, or July 16, 2017... a year and six days after starting the game. Of course, L40 is a completionist ornament as of right now, since there's nothing more I can gain from XP itself - my top Pokemon are all L39 (although, XP is a proxy for both candy and Stardust, so there are still gains to be had from grinding).
But that's just for now, as I'm certain the level cap will be increased, and (like other MMOs and Ingress), there will likely be some benefit to being higher level. Medal completion may help in this regard as well. I also think (speculate... hope) that the coming gym rework - which currently works to my benefit - is going to completely change how we've built our teams. Hopefully, it will bring all sorts of cool new strategic elements (like the card and main series games), as well as reducing the currently "top heavy", brute force aspects of battling.
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Pokemon level * 2 and IV
This way, a level 33.5 pokemon would begin with "67". Multiplying it by 2 saves 2 characters.
Read it now on the way to work, exceptional post! Great to read and great to know, obviously will refer to this like to a bible when I get to Tokyo one day. Happy hunting and thank you!
Ps. We should have posts like this about every major capital in the world.
Where would you recommend as the best place to find a farfetch'd? I've got family spending two days in Tokyo on a trip and they really want to find one!
Good work that an amazing effort.
What part of Meguro river would you recommend to check out for dratini? was going to do some cherry blossem viewing over the next while and thought it would be a good chance for both?
What's the tracker people here are using? I don't know about it, and I'd like to try it for myself. :)
Reading this made my day.
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the unown medal doesn't appear in the list until you catch your first one
"small outlook"
I don't think I could last a minute anywhere near the subway stations or that crosswalk or anywhere that there's that many people. The beautiful places, however, are so incredibly beautiful. I wouldn't personally have thought there were that many areas of forest and parkland and such, i guess everyone still knows how important it is
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IS Toyko really that much different than the other world's biggest cities?
I live in a town of 2000 people (I do occasionally head to a city of 100,000 35 miles away) and I'm level 35, finished Gen1 during the Halloween event and have almost finished Gen2 other than Unown (I lack 131 candies to evolve the rest).
Yeah, my Collector and Backbacker badges are only 1/3-1/2 of OP and I'd love a rural boost, but I can't see how you get to your level of outrage.
Could you elaborate how it is different from other major cities of the world? Especially how Niantic played a role in those differences?
I really don't belong in this subreddit.
What little there is to do in this game is achieved through grinding and good luck. Cheating by way of scanner completely negates the only achievements one can accomplish. If you don't want to play the game the way it's designed, why not just buy an account? Much more efficient.
Obviously your post is majestic and you did a lot of work to compile it and I applaud you for that; I just disagree with the entire premise.