The area containing the imperial palace (Kōkyo) and the surrounding green park environment is called Chiyoda. It’s calm peacefulness and scarce buildings on a vast area with nothing but trees and green makes the skyscrapers surrounding it even taller and more threatening. It seems like here in Chiyoda, the development has been set on pause while the city around it is getting a remake ever other year to reach even higher and bigger limits of modern architecture and space efficiency to cope with the mass of people living in the Greater Tokyo area. Greater Tokyo with its 38 million inhabitants the most populous metropolitan area in the world. To me, the beauty lies in the contrast of all this beautiful nature framed by glass and concrete skyscrapers.
Imperial Palace
Chiyoda
On the way to Chiyoda I obviously had to make a stop in Ginza, the shopping area of Tokyo famous for its Western department stores and all the fancy brands which are good for window shopping. I loved the selection of Japanese designer gadgets, particularly interior pieces, which you can find at the Tokyo Plaza Ginza. The roof-terrace provides you also a fantastic view over these parts of Tokyo and doesn’t cost you a dime. I was originally planing to buy some new sneakers in Japan but as it turned out all the shoes that I like didn’t have my size as the maximum at all the places I tried was with size 44. I wonder where the few tall guys that saw get their shoes.
Ginza from above
Ginza
Some traditional dessert seen in Ginza
Famous for Tokyo is of course the Tsukiji Market, the fish market which is known for its intense tuna auctions and for Netflix viewers like me its present appearance and praises in the sushi documentary Jiro dreams of sushi which portraits the first 3 star Michelin sushi restaurant in the world and its sushi master Jiro. Watch it if you have any interest in good food, sushi or Japanese culture. It’ll provide you such an insightful view on how important expertise and perfection is for the Japanese culture. Logically I had to eat some sushi myself but at the Tsukiji Market I went for another version of sushi. Instead of the common piece-by-piece sushi I got a bowl of rice which was topped with different varieties of raw fish and seafood. Delicious!
Fish at the Tsukiji Market
Green Tea
Fish Market
Hamarikyu Gardens
In Style
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