From Tokyo to the Page: Researching a Wildlife Crime Thriller in Japan

There is only so much a writer can learn about a place from photographs, maps, and hours spent online. At some point, if you want to understand how a city sounds at street level, how a hotel lobby feels late in the afternoon, or what happens when you descend a narrow staircase into a crowded basement bar, you have to go there.

That was the idea behind the research trip my husband, Gareth, and I took to Japan while I was developing the second book in my wildlife crime thriller series. The story is set in and around Tokyo, and I’m currently calling it Blood in the Sea, although titles often change before a book finally reaches readers. I knew early on that I wanted to see several of the locations for myself before I became too deeply committed to scenes that might later need to be rewritten.

The trip took place in early March, which technically sounds like the beginning of spring. Tokyo, however, had other plans. An unseasonal cold snap brought Arctic winds, freezing rain, and exactly the sort of weather my too-light jacket was not designed to handle. I spent several days with icy water running down my collar, and before long I was sick enough to require the assistance of an enthusiastic pharmacist in Shinjuku. The famous cherry blossoms were still some way off, so there was no dreamy pink canopy to compensate for the weather, either.

It may not have been the version of Tokyo that appears on travel posters, but as research, it was invaluable.

Finding the Tokyo I needed for the story

We began our stay at the Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo in Shinjuku, which I had chosen for a practical reason. I needed a business hotel for the novel, somewhere that could plausibly host conferences and corporate events. The Keio Plaza fit the setting I had in mind, but it also reminded me of the business hotels I stayed in during my former corporate life, which gave the location an unexpected layer of familiarity.

That familiarity is often what I’m looking for on a research trip. I can find floor plans and photographs online, but fiction depends on the smaller details that are harder to search for. A room has a particular atmosphere. A lobby has its own rhythm. People move through a business hotel differently than they move through a boutique property or a holiday resort, and those distinctions become useful once characters start inhabiting the space.

Shinjuku itself was almost the opposite of the hotel's-controlled environment. The district was busy and bright, with wide streets, restaurants, shops, izakayas, and neon signs competing for practically every available patch of wall. Even in the cold, the sidewalks were crowded, and young women dressed in maid outfits stood outside handing café flyers to passing tourists.

One evening, we found an izakaya down a narrow staircase in the basement of an older building. It was packed with people, voices, laughter, and smoke, with basic food that reminded me of a cross between tapas and greasy fast food. It was noisy enough to become overwhelming at times, but that was exactly why it was worth experiencing. A photograph can show me what a restaurant looks like; sitting inside one tells me what my characters would have to navigate.

We also traveled to Roppongi and spent time wandering around Tokyo Midtown before making our way to the Ritz-Carlton, another setting I wanted to use in the book. These were not sightseeing stops chosen at random. Each location helped me test the version of Tokyo I had already started building in my head against the real one.

Bryde's whale | 📸: Morningdew

When wildlife crime research becomes uncomfortable

One of the places I specifically wanted to visit was Ueno Zoo, partly because wildlife and animal welfare are so closely connected to the themes of this series. The visit turned out to be one of the more difficult parts of the trip.

It was another bitterly cold morning, with freezing drizzle falling almost continuously. Inside the zoo, several of the enclosures left a strong impression on me: a Pallas’s cat in a small glass enclosure, polar bears repeatedly pacing in front of the glass, and an elephant confined in a concrete enclosure with very little room to move.

The elephant affected me most, probably because it features in Blood on the Veld and I had already spent so much time researching it. I could appreciate that the indoor enclosure may have been heated and that keeping the animal inside might have been intended to protect it from the cold, but seeing an animal of that size in such a restricted space was still difficult.

There are parts of research that are interesting, parts that are enjoyable, and parts that are uncomfortable enough to stay with you long after you leave. For me, that morning belonged firmly in the last category. Those moments matter because this series deals with wildlife crime and animal welfare, and it would be difficult to write honestly about those subjects while keeping the realities that inspire them at a comfortable distance.

Beyond Tokyo

After several days in Tokyo, we traveled west to Nagoya, where I wanted to visit Atsuta Shrine for one of the novel’s subplots. Despite the number of visitors, the shrine felt remarkably peaceful, with wooden and stone structures surrounded by trees and greenery. We did our best to follow the customs and etiquette as we took in the setting I would eventually have to recreate on the page.

Some of the most memorable parts of the trip, however, had nothing to do with formal research. On our way back to the station, Gareth and I stopped at a tiny yakitori restaurant on a nearly deserted side street. Apart from another couple, we were the only customers, seated at a long counter opposite the owner, who appeared to be chef, server, and host all at once.

We spent a couple of hours using translation software to communicate while passing back and forth thimble-sized cups of sake and trying different cuts of meat on sticks. It was one of those experiences I could never have planned as part of an itinerary, and I’m not even sure it will appear in the book. Even so, moments like that change your understanding of a place in a way that organized research rarely can.

The conversation that gave me new questions

The most valuable part of the trip came from a meeting arranged before we arrived. I had been talking on LinkedIn with Katrin Matthes, Japan policy coordinator at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and we realized that our trips to Tokyo would overlap by a few days. We met at one of her favorite ramen restaurants in Shinjuku, where we talked over steaming bowls of spicy noodles about wildlife, animal welfare, and commercial whaling in Japan.

Katrin shared her perspective on the commercial whaling industry and told me that demand for whale meat is now extremely low. In her view, government support, loans, subsidies, and ideas about national identity continue to play an important role in keeping the industry going. Just as useful from a novelist’s point of view, she raised several plot possibilities that I had not considered before our conversation.

That is one of the reasons I value speaking to people who know a subject far better than I do. Research is not simply about finding information that confirms the story you have already planned. Sometimes the best thing that can happen is discovering that your understanding is incomplete, because that forces the story in a more interesting direction.

For anyone interested in learning more about Whale and Dolphin Conservation and its work protecting whales, dolphins, and porpoises, the organization has more information available on its website.

Bringing the research home

By the time Gareth and I packed our bags and headed to the hotel beside Haneda Airport, Japan had given me far more than a collection of settings. I had accumulated small sensory details that make scenes feel lived-in, a better understanding of locations I had already planned to use, several experiences I had never anticipated, and new questions about the wildlife issues running through the novel.

We both left wanting to return. Next time, we would like to see more of Japan’s nature reserves and remote areas, places that offer a very different view of the country from Tokyo's skyscrapers and neon.

For now, those experiences are finding their way into Blood in the Sea. Not every hotel, restaurant, conversation, or freezing walk through Tokyo will appear exactly as it happened, nor should it. The purpose of a research trip is not to reproduce reality word for word. It is to understand a place well enough that, when the fictional version finally appears on the page, it feels as though the characters have truly been there.