only came to prominence in the early 1600s. Then, just little more than a village named Edo, shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu chose to turn the modest fortifications overlooking Edo into a mighty castle from where he would rule his newly unified country. From there, the de facto capital boomed, and by the time of the Meiji Restoration of 1868—when Edo officially took Kyoto’s place as capital, and had its name changed to Tokyo (the Eastern Capital)—the village had transformed into a city of 600,000. It’s not looked back. Today Tokyo is home to almost fourteen million, a number that swells to more than thirty-five million if you include the parts of neighboring prefectures that make up the Greater Tokyo area. With that there are no surprises when it comes to Tokyo’s energy, its crowds, and its color, but they are just a few parts of a metropolis that mixes touches of the old with swathes of the ultra-modern.
Dressed up for the 7-5-3 festival
Shibuya Crossing
Tokyo Skytree
Shibuya on Halloween
Harajuku Cosplayers
Sensoji Temple
Imperial Palace
Meiji Shrine
GINZA AND THE IMPERIAL PALACE
Tokyo’s Bustling Central Districts
For generations Ginza has signified Tokyo at its most exclusive. Just drop the name and for many Japanese it will conjure up images of fine dining, plush department stores and boutiques, not to mention the exorbitantly priced hostess clubs that boomed in the 1980s bubble. That’s not a new thing; the area’s connection to wealth goes well beyond recent memory. In its earliest Edo-era days, Ginza was home to a silver mint (gin za, hence the area’s name) created by the first Edo shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who united a war-torn Japan at the turn of the seventeenth century and, with Tokyo (then called Edo) as his new capital, initiated an (almost) isolationist dynasty that would last until the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s.
In the Meiji era, Ginza was at the forefront of Tokyo’s Western-influenced development. With the support of European architects, the district saw its fire-prone wooden buildings replaced by stone architecture, its muddy streets transformed into paved roads, and eventually the advent of electric trams and subways. Head to the Ginza Crossing today and you can still see examples of that early architecture in the shape of the Wako department store, whose curved granite façade and clock tower (first built in 1894, but then redone shortly after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake) stand across from another landmark in the prestigious 1930-built Mitsukoshi department store.
Today, shopping is one of the major draws to Ginza. Along with Mitsukoshi and Wako, you have branches of Matsuya and Printemps department stores, the plush Ginza 6 shopping complex, a slew of sleekly designed flagships for European luxury brands like Bulgari, Cartier, Chanel, and Omega (to call out just a handful) and—highlighting the trend toward simple, “un-branded” fashions—major local branches of local retailers Muji and Uniqlo. Then, of course, comes the food. It isn’t all in the wallet-hurting category, but the fact that thirty-eight restaurants in Ginza have Michelin stars speaks volumes. If you wanted to splurge on the best sushi, finest tempura or most expensive wagyu steak, Ginza would be the place to do it. Yet on the flipside, if you wanted something cheaper, the restaurants under the elevated train tracks that cut between Ginza and the Imperial Palace area have the cheerful side of Japanese cuisine with yakitori joints, izakaya and plenty of other casual places.
And what of the Imperial Palace area? Heading there from the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station you get a real clash of the old and the new, the station’s restored historic 1914 façade dwarfed by the skyscrapers of the Marunouchi business district, shimmering giants that appeared during Marunouchi’s much needed facelift of the early 2000s and which on the opposite side to the station now cast their reflections in the outer moats of the palace grounds. Beyond some simple but unspectacular gardens, there isn’t really all that much to explore at the palace—although the uninterrupted three-mile (five-kilometer) running loop around it is one of the best runs in Tokyo—but that doesn’t stop busloads upon busloads of visitors from coming to snap photos of the moats and the few off-limits structures that are visible. And to be fair, as Tokyo goes, the classic palace photo—the doubled-arched Nijubashi Bridge in the foreground with an Edo-era guard tower poking through thick woods beyond the moat behind—is undoubtedly one of Tokyo’s most iconic historic sights.
The Wako department store at the Ginza Crossing.
Whether neon-drenched at night or glistening in the sunshine, Ginza always manages to retain a flashy sense of high style.
Ginza teems with architecturally striking flagship stores for high-end brands like Bulgari, Cartier, Chanel, Mikimoto and many others.
It’s not just expensive brands and boutiques in Ginza nowadays. Simple, affordable and extremely popular stores like Uniqlo and Muji are going from strength to strength in Japan, Ginza included.
The Marunouchi area on the Imperial Palace side of Tokyo Station. Over the past decade, the neighborhood has been transformed by multipurpose skyscrapers like the Marunouchi Building—it’s not just gray offices here anymore, but swanky bars, restaurants, shops, and hotels.
Ginza isn’t just about Michelin restaurants. In the neighboring Shimbashi and Yurakucho areas are hundreds of lively, value restaurants and bars popular for unwinding after work.
The old Tokyo Station building has recently undergone a renovation and is well worth exploring to view its early twentieth-century interior.
The Nijubashi Bridge and an outer turret at Tokyo’s
