Ginza: Silver Dollar City

Ginza is like expanding Chapel Street in Melbourne over a suburb, raising the building height 20 floors and adding really good public transport. On Second thought, it's not really like Chapel Street...

Observations:

Ginza was a swamp, then it was a silver mint. Then everything burnt down in 1872 (a common occurrence) so the Meiji government designated the Ginza area as a "model of modernization" (another common occurrence). The result was a lot more fireproof brick buildings and larger, better streets connecting Shimbashi Station all the way to the foreign concession in Tsukiji.

The end result is Ginza has some pretty darn large boulevards in straight lines - a bit rare in Tokyo. If you are going to build a grand boulevard, you might as well fill it with your best bourgeois shops and department stores, which is pretty much what Ginza turned into.

Even though we stayed in a hotel in the Ginza area, this city is huge so we didn't see all of it, but we did accidentally discover the following attractions:

Hokōsha Tengoku:

Or Hokoten for short, literally means "pedestrian heaven". Each Saturday and Sunday, from 12:00 noon until 5:00 pm, the main street through Ginza is closed off to road traffic, allowing people to walk freely.

We didn't know this beforehand so one time when coming out of the numerous subway stations, it was a little disconcerting to find the streets empty of cars and people all over the roads.

First thought was actually an earthquake - did we miss it while on the subway? If it was an earthquake, why are some people still shopping...? On the other hand, this is the upmarket shopping strip, so maybe that's what rich people do... Why is everyone still so calm in an earthquake? Or maybe that's just how the Japanese are in a natural disaster seeing as they have so many of them living on the edge of a tectonic plate... :/

Thanks to The Google, we were realised our ignorance - still didn't buy anything there though because that place is crazy expensive.

Gado-shita:

Means "below the girder" and refers to the restaurant district built up under the brick arches beneath the elevated train tracks of the JR Yamanote line near Yurakucho station. These restaurants and bars are favoured by the Tokyo suits since Yurakucho station is the nearest main railway station on the Yamanote ring line to Ginza and the Yamanote line is just a circle line that stops at every major part of Tokyo.

We'd often pass through this part to get anywhere - it's totally worth a look purely just to get some really cool scifi dystopian visuals. It's pretty cool to look at - it's nearly 1 km of this though so the last two of the gado-shita pics are poached from the internets.

Godzilla Statue

Walk past the Gado-shita and Yurakucho station and you get to the (newly revamped) Godzilla statue near Hibiya station. It's 3 metres high but it feels quite small because it's on a large base surrounded by lots of little old ladies taking photos. At first it looks like it has guards to protect it from the fans, but it's really to make sure no one gets run over since it stands over the entrance to an underground car park.

Side note: There are frequently lots of guards, police and/or workers in high vis uniforms "guarding" against all manner of dangers here from crossings, to a van stopped on the side of the road, to trucks existing a building site - to even a cable that is hanging too low. If you are a stickler for workplace health and safety rules, Japan is paradise.Read more