Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
73
until dawn. Nearby
Nishi Azabu,
once a
residential neighborhood (many foreign-
ers live here), offers a quieter and saner
dining alternative to frenetic Roppongi.
Between Roppongi and Nishi Azabu is
the eye-popping, 11-hectare (27-acre)
Roppongi Hills,
Tokyo's largest urban
development with 230 shops and restau-
rants, a first-class hotel, a garden, apart-
ments, offices, a cinema complex, a
playground, and Tokyo's highest art
museum, on the 53rd floor of Mori
Tower. Astonishingly, Roppongi Hills
was upstaged in 2007 by the 10-hectare
(25-acre)
Tokyo
Midtown,
which boasts
Tokyo's tallest building, a Ritz-Carlton, a
medical center, 130 fashion boutiques
and restaurants, apartments, offices, a
garden, and the Suntory Museum of Art.
Nearby is
The National Art Center,
Tokyo,
focusing on changing exhibi-
tions of modern and contemporary art.
Akasaka
(map on p. 103) Close to
Japan's seat of government and home to
several large hotels and a small nightlife
district, Akasaka caters mostly to busi-
nessmen and bureaucrats, making it of
little interest to tourists. It does, how-
ever, boast some good restaurants; in
recent years, so many Koreans have
opened restaurants and other establish-
ments here that it has been dubbed
“Little Korea.”
Shinagawa
(map on p. 105) Once an
important post station on the old
Tokaido Highway, Shinagawa remains
an important crossroads in large part
because of
Shinagawa Station,
a stop
on the Shinkansen bullet train and on
the southern end of the Yamanote Line
loop. Home to several hotels, it has also
witnessed a major blossoming of office
construction in recent years, making it
a serious rival of Shinjuku's business
district. Other than the
Hara Museum
of Contemporary Art
and
Sengakuji
Temple,
however, there's little here to
attract sightseers.
Ryogoku
(map on p. 174) Located
outside the Yamanote Line loop east of
the Sumida River, Ryogoku has served
as Tokyo's sumo town since the 17th
century. Today it's home not only to
Tokyo's large
sumo stadium and
museum,
but also to about a dozen
sumo stables, where wrestlers live and
train. You can often see the giants as
they stroll the district in their character-
istic
yukata
robes. In 1993, Ryogoku
became a tourist destination with the
opening of the
Edo-Tokyo Museum,
which outlines the history of this fasci-
nating city.
Odaiba
(map on p. 174) This is
Tokyo's newest district, quite literally—
it was constructed from reclaimed land
in Tokyo Bay. Connected to the main-
land by
Rainbow Bridge
(famous for
its chameleon colors after nightfall), the
Yurikamome Line monorail, the Rinkai
Line, and a vehicular harbor tunnel,
Odaiba is home to hotels, Japan's largest
convention space, several shopping
complexes (including the very fancy
Venus Fort), futuristic buildings
(including the Kenzo Tange-designed
Fuji TV building), several museums
(such as the Museum of Maritime Sci-
ence and the National Museum of
Emerging Science and Innovation), a
hot-spring public bath that harkens
back to the Edo era, a monolithic Ferris
wheel, the Panasonic Center showcas-
ing its products, and Megaweb (a huge
multimedia car amusement and exhibi-
tion center sponsored by Toyota). For
young Japanese, Odaiba is one of
Tokyo's hottest dating spots.
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