Rob Goss - Tokyo

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight CityGuide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Tokyo, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editors Choice categories of activies and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Tokyo. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, hotels, activities from to culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in Tokyo are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Tokyo. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.

Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.

2013 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

Table of Contents

Introduction

History

Features

Places

History

Introduction: Tokyo Enigmas

Tokyo pulsates with an unremitting energy that stems from a tradition of constant change and reinvention. And while this sprawling metropolis is also crowded and seemingly chaotic even ugly many visitors find the city strangely addictive.

In submitting itself to repeated sessions of radical urban surgery and reconstruction, Tokyos remodelled surfaces always seem fresh, managing to escape the rigor mortis that envelops many European capitals. Tokyoites are the ultimate early adaptors, their city a virtual Petri dish for testing the latest in fashion, art and technology. With its attention firmly on the here and now, Tokyo can seem like a city with a short-term memory. Tokyo novelist Masahiko Shimada expressed this preference for the present when he wrote: Things that happened yesterday are already covered with shifting sand. And last months events are completely hidden. The year before is twenty metres under, and things that happened five years ago are fossils.

Constantly mutating, Tokyo is a difficult animal to classify; a sense of artificiality and impermanence distinguishes it from all the other well-grounded, great cities of the world. Although Tokyo presents the visitor with glimpses of a mode of life that can seem both enigmatic and indecipherable, it need not be so.

Tokyo is a city that should be walked. Seen from a train window or the upper floors of an office block, what appears to be a bland mass from afar will, on close-up, afford endless stimulation in the form of surprising oddities and sudden transitions. In this ultra-modern mishmash, street and place names have survived intact from the ancient Edo era, sustaining history and nostalgia through their literary and narrative connections, long after their visible features on the cityscape have vanished. While Tokyos streets, awash with the gizmos and gadgets of a portable, lightweight electronic culture, crackle with static and blink with neon, there is an older side to the city visible in quiet neighbourhoods of timeworn wooden houses and the leafy compounds of ancient temples and shrines.

Children in Tokyo being cared for by nursery staff.

Chris Stowers/Apa Publications

Tokyos Top 10 Attractions

At a glance, the Tokyo sights and activities you cant afford to miss, from traditional Asakusa and fashionable Omotesando to relaxing in one of the citys onsen baths or admiring nature in Shinjuku Gyoen.

Top Attraction 1

Omotesando . Parading down tree-lined Omotesando, Tokyos most fashionable shopping avenue, is a must; many of the boutiques are housed in striking modern buildings designed by the worlds top architects. For more information, .

Ming Tang Evans/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 2

Onsen . Join throngs of locals enjoying a soothing onsen dip at Odaibas Oedo Onsen Monogatari, a giant modern bathhouse with a nostalgic design, or the more contemporary-styled Spa LaQua. For more information, .

Rex Features

Top Attraction 3

Senso-ji . Resplendent in red and gold is Senso-ji, the Buddhist temple thats the spiritual core of Asakusa, one of Tokyos most venerable areas packed with craft shops and lovely ryokan (traditional Japanese inns). For more information, .

iStockphoto

Top Attraction 4

Shinjuku Gyoen . Tokyo has several beautiful traditional parks and gardens, among which the extensive Shinjuku Gyoen is a standout, combining French, English and Japanese styles of landscaping. For more information, .