The streets are lined with foreign imported cars and their fashionably dressed passengers.
Benefiting from this popularity, Ebisu has followed suit and is now positioned to become one of the next hip areas. Already restaurants, clubs, and shops are filling the back streets and the major Sapporo Beer development is guaranteed to change the face of the neighborhood.
Harajuku
Dedicated to youth, fashion trendiness, and the belief that all consumers under twenty-five are created equal, Harajuku thrives as the kid's capital of Tokyo. The district swarms with the well-dressed pampered youth of Japan, raised in an era of post-war prosperity and carefree consumerism. But the rigorous school system, the pressures for conformity applied to the salary-man, and the satisfied-housewife pattern of life have their young victims. Many of the dancers who have filled Harajuku's Yoyogi Park every Sunday for the past decade or so are the ones who can't make it in the system or simply don't care to try. In an ironic display of rebellious behavior, the kids dance in well-choreographed, polite groups—usually boys with boys, girls with girls. The original dancers in the later 70s were named the Takenokozoku, or "bamboo-shoot-people," after the bright Asian-style costumes made by a boutique called Takenoko. In the eighties James Dean was the role model and fifties nostalgia reigned. Since the nineties, the dancers have been joined by growing crowds of foreign, often Middle Eastern, laborers who gather nearby.
The spirit of Harajuku is as infectious as it is insipid. For young fashion, the district beats any other part of Tokyo. Most of the big designers' boutiques are in nearby Aoyama and Shibuya, but cheap knock-offs and play clothes overflow from the hundreds of shops near the central crossing and lining the back streets. The main landmark is the La Foret fashion building, and down the street toward Togo Jinja shrine is Takeshitadori, famous for its bargains in trendy fashions.
North of the district is Yoyogi Park, the Meiji Jingu shrine, and its outer gardens. The park attracts some of Tokyo's more individualistic inhabitants—dancers and street performers of all kinds, and toward the north end of the park a few saxophonists or trumpeters will invariably be practicing their instruments in the bushes.
Aoyama
The post-Harajuku generation finds more of interest in the neighboring Aoyama district, where life moves at a more sophisticated, expensive pace. The main street, Aoyama-dori, stretches from Shibuya to Akasaka, meeting along the way a number of side streets that spawn ever growing numbers of boutiques, specialty shops, and restaurants. Kotto-dori, on the Shibuya end, is famous for its antique shops. The road to the Nezu Museum nearby has boutiques by Tokyo's top fashion designers and many top European designers as well. It also boasts Tokyo's first major building by Osaka-based architect Ando Tadao—La Collectione.
Aoyama has more good design and architecture than any other district. The Spiral and Tepia buildings by Maki Fumihiko, Collectione by Ando Tadao, the Mori Hanae Building, and Sogetsu Hall by Tange Kenzo, and dozens of other smaller buildings by young and emerging Japanese architects as well as work by well-known western architects such as Mario Botta and Aldo Rossi.
The Edo period Aoyama daimyo family lived here, leaving for posterity their name and the family graveyard, now the Aoyama-bochi, a great place for a quiet stroll or for viewing the spring cherry blossoms.
On the Akasaka end of Aoyama-dori is a huge walled-in green spot that hides the Akasaka detached palace, the latter being an official state guest house modeled after Buckingham Palace on the outside and Versailles on the inside.
Shinjuku
A showcase for all the worst aspects of the city's chaos, Shinjuku has, at the same time, a stronger, more vibrant spirit than any other part of town. Much of the spirit borders on sleaze. Shinjuku is the latest of the late night districts, and one of the cheapest. It's here that night-time revelers come to escape the sophistication and civility of the city's chic southwest districts.
Shinjuku has always had a rather questionable reputation. During the Edo period it was a small lodging town, not even within the city limits. A fight between a local brothel owner and the younger brother of an influential samurai official led to the area's disappearance. But fifty years later it grew up again and became a major pleasure quarter frequented by the lower classes.
In 1889 Shinjuku Station was built with a new train line servicing the western suburbs. The area immediately prospered. The residential population increased, as did the number of pleasure houses. When courtesans were liberated in 1872, the formalities of the geisha entertainments were abandoned, and most of the former geisha houses became simple houses of prostitution with rooms for rent. Shinjuku was notorious for having more such rooms than any other part of town. Plans to clean up the neighborhood and relocate the pleasure quarter were drawn up but never put into effect.
The area continued to grow and in 1920 part of it was annexed into the city's Yotsuya Ward. The rest of the district became a part of Tokyo in 1932 when the city limits were redrawn. The station became increasingly important as a commuter transfer point and is now the largest in the country, handling over two million passengers a day.
Shinjuku has prospered. Around the station are found some of the highest rents in Japan. Department stores, boutiques, fashion buildings, and the huge Shinjuku Station underground arcade serves commuters on their way home or suburbanites in for the weekends when the major thoroughfare becomes a pedestrian "paradise" (or "hell" depending on how much you like mobs). Students from the surrounding universities form another big part of the crowd.
But life in Shinjuku really begins after dark. Kabukicho is the center of the action. The Kabuki theater originally planned as a cultural focus for the neighborhood never materialized, but gave the district its name. In its place a modern pleasure quarter flourished after the war. The area has numerous movie theaters, and the surrounding streets are famous for their x-rated establishments and "pink" cabaret (in Japan "pink" is the symbolic x-rated color). This is where you're most likely to spot yakuza types—the Japanese mafia who are easily recognized by their gangster-style dress, their squared-off crew cuts or short perms, and the notable absence of fingers.
Goruden-gai, another famous neighborhood now threatened by the forces of redevelopment, is a street full of quirky, tiny closet-sized bars and is one of the few parts of town where a little caution is advised. Shombenyokocho, near the train tracks on the west side of the station, is yet another drinking area. Full of cheap nomiya, the name literally translates as "piss alley." Ni-chome is the gay bar district.
The Nishi-guchi (west-side) of Shinjuku claims more skyscrapers than any other part of Tokyo. Built on land that was formerly a water and sewage treatment plant, the area is properly antiseptic. The oldest building dates from 1971. In 1991 after years of planning, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government opened its new city hall. The controversial, almost gothic architecture of this huge Tange Kenzo-designed building has become Shinjuku's proud new landmark and a rather thought-provoking symbol of 1980's Japan.
Ikebukuro
Ikebukuro is basically a less interesting version of Shinjuku. A commuter's town, the district lacks specific character. The major attractions are the sprawling Seibu Department Store (at one time the largest in the world) and the sixty-story Sunshine City complex.
Until the Meiji period the district was one of farm and forest lands, famous as a spot for viewing the summer fireflies. A small bag-shaped pond in the area gave the district its name-Ikebukuro means literally "pond bag." A train station was built in 1903 and served, at the time, about thirty passengers a day. Now it's second only to Shinjuku.
In the thirties, Ikebukuro was a haunt of artists and writers, and the area was dubbed, in all seriousness, "Ikebukuro Montparnasse." The district later became the site of Tokyo Prison. After World War II, the prison was renamed Sugamo by
