splits opinion. For some it’s a tourist trap, for others it’s the highlight of a visit to Tokyo. In truth, it can be both. The colorful Nakamise-dori, the shop-lined street that forms the main approach to Senso-ji, is as touristy as it gets in Tokyo with its plastic samurai swords, trinkets and slow-moving horde of tourists. The rest of the Senso-ji Temple complex is simply magnificent.
According to legend, there has been a temple here since the 620s, when two brothers snagged a golden image of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, in their nets while fishing in the nearby Sumida River. Awestruck by the tiny statue, they were inspired to build a temple in which to enshrine it, and Senso-ji was born. As Senso-ji’s power grew over the centuries with the support first of the Kamakura imperial court and later of the Tokugawa shogunate, so too Asakusa grew around it, expanding from an insignificant fishing village to a thriving merchant town and then the city’s premier entertainment district in the prewar years (page 29). Throughout, Senso-ji has always remained at Asakusa’s heart and it’s not hard to see why.
Senso-ji greets visitors with the great Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate), a roofed gate standing almost 12 meters (39 feet) high and 12 meters wide under which hangs a 1,500-pound (680-kilogram) red paper lantern that itself measures some 4 meters (12 feet) in height. Protected on either side by the menacing bronze statues of Raijin and Fujin (the gods of thunder and wind), Kaminari-mon is the first of several imposing structures in the complex. At the other end of Nakamisedori, the two-story Hozomon Gate stands 22 meters (72 feet) high and is decorated with three giant lanterns and two 800-pound (362-kilogram) straw sandals. Used to store many of Senso-ji’s most precious relics, it is guarded by two identical 5-meter (16-foot)-tall statues of Nio, the guardian deity of the Buddha–two statues that make Raijin and Fujin look positively friendly. Beyond that, in air heavy with pungent incense, comes a five-tiered pagoda and the larger, albeit less ornate main building, in front of which visitors pray and wave incense smoke over themselves for its supposed curative powers.
Is it touristy? In parts, yes. But in the middle of a city as modern and short on space as Tokyo, it’s a combination of tradition and scale that you shouldn’t miss.
Opening Times Open all year round. Getting There Senso-ji is several minutes walk from Asakusa on the Asakusa and Ginza subway lines. Contact Senso-ji Temple: senso-ji.jp Admission Fee Free.
2 Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown
The capital at its most modern and most stylish
Not much more than two decades ago, Roppongi was the preserve of late night drinkers and restaurant goers, just another drab piece of urbanity that would come to life (often raucously so) after dark. How things have changed! Today, with two of the city’s most fashionable urban redevelopments, it’s the epitome of cosmopolitan Tokyo.
The catalyst for change was billionaire Minoru Mori, head of the giant Mori Building Company, and the $2.5 billion Roppongi Hills complex he launched to much hype and success in 2003: the crowds that flocked to the complex in the first few months after it opened made Shibuya Crossing look sedate.
With more than 200 shops, boutiques, restaurants, cafés and bars, as well as the sleek Grand Hyatt Hotel, the stunningly contemporary Mori Art Museum (page 106) located on the top floors of the complex’s glistening main tower, plus, in separate buildings, the head-quarters of Asahi TV and some of the city’s most exclusive apartments, it was rightly billed as a “city within a city,” breaking new ground for Tokyo with its scale and luxury. It set the stage for other sleek urban developments that would soon follow, one of which would be built very near by.
Not to be outdone by Mori, Mitsui Fudosan, Japan’s largest real estate developer, built a city within a city of its own–Tokyo Midtown–just down the road. Opened in 2007, Mitsui’s complex is made up of five buildings and a central tower that, at 248 meters (814 feet), is the tallest building in Tokyo Prefecture. Its five-story Galleria is home to 73,000 square meters (790,000 square feet) of stores and restaurants, while the surrounding grounds include a spacious park and garden.
Where Roppongi Hills boasts the Grand Hyatt, Midtown has the five-star Ritz Carlton (page 79) on the upper floors of its main tower. Midtown doesn’t do badly for art either, with the Design Sight 21_21 (2121designsight.jp) gallery and workshop, created by renowned architect Tadao Ando and fashion designer Issey Miyake to showcase modern Japanese design, as well as the Suntory Museum of Art (suntory.com/sma) with its fine collection of traditional Japanese art. The result is two cities within a city, standing face to face and creating the quintessential Tokyo experience.
Opening Times Varies by store, attraction and restaurant, but most places within Roppongi Hills and Midtown will be open by 11 a.m. Check the websites below. Getting There Roppongi Station is on the Hibiya and Oedo subway lines. Contact Roppongi Hills: roppongihills.com. Tokyo Midtown: tokyo-midtown.com Admission Fee Free
3 Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market
Energetic tuna auctions and the city’s best sushi breakfast
It’s 5.30 a.m. and Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market bursts into life with the ringing of a bell that heralds the start of the daily tuna auctions. What follows is a blur of hand signals set to a cacophony of hollers, a rapid to and fro between auctioneer and wholesalers that’s incomprehensible to the outsider. It’s like watching a classical performance, but with choreographed kabuki moves and with kimono replaced by rubber boots and overalls. And instead of a theater, you are in a cavernous warehouse filled with line upon line of whole frozen tunas.
Away from the auction, the sprawling main market is a hive of activity all through the morning, with more than 60,000 wholesalers, buyers and shippers busy supplying the city’s restaurants and shops with what amounts to more than 700,000 tons of seafood a year. To put that into context, each day in excess of ¥1.5 billion ($19 million) worth of produce is traded here, and not only seafood. Tsukiji, or Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market to give its proper name, also trades in vegetables, meat and even cooking utensils, while the outer public market teems with small sushi bars.
What the original fishermen of Tsukiji would make of it now is anyone’s guess. The area was nothing more than mud flats when the first Edo-era shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, brought the fisherman in from Osaka at the start of the 17th century with the order to supply his new capital with seafood. Not until after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the subsequent consolidation of small private markets into large wholesale venues did Tsukiji takes its current form.
Tsukiji reigns as the world’s largest fish market, but that looks set to end. The Metropolitan Government of Tokyo is planning to move the fish auction market to a new (and controversial) site in eastern Tokyo in order to cash in on the land value of Tsukiji’s current location, which is estimated to be 350 billion yen or approximately 5 million yen per tsubo (3.3 square meters). However, the outer market precincts with their food stalls and sushi restaurants will remain.
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