Odaiba is the largest artificial island in Japan. Odaiba was originally constructed in 1853 by the Tokugawa shogunate as a series of six fortresses in order to protect Tokyo from attack by sea, the primary threat being Commodore Matthew Perry’s Black Ships, which had arrived in the same year. Daiba in Japanese refers to the cannon batteries placed on the islands.

In 1928, the Dai-San Daiba (第三台場) or “No. 3 Battery” was refurbished and opened to the public as the Metropolitan Daiba Park, which remains open to this day.

The modern redevelopment of Odaiba started after the success of Expo ‘85 in Tsukuba. The Japanese economy was riding high, and Odaiba was to be a showcase as futuristic living, built at a cost of over JPY 1 trillion. T3, as it was nicknamed, was supposed to be a self-sufficient city of over 100,000 residents. The “bubble economy” burst in 1991, and by 1995, Odaiba was a virtual wasteland, underpopulated and full of vacant lots.

In 1996, the area was rezoned from pure business to allow also commercial and entertainment districts, and the area started coming back to life as Tokyo discovered the seaside it never had. Hotels and shopping malls opened up, several large companies including Fuji Television moved their headquarters to the island, and transportation links improved.

What is there to see in Odaiba? There are a tone of futuristic looking buildings and shopping complexes there. A big reason why Odaiba is considered a futuristic shopping district is mainly due to the rezoning plan, as stated above, which was to change the outlook of Odaiba and turn it into a shopping district.

A little trivia about this island: This city is featured in the anime series Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 as the hometown of the first two groups of Chosen Children. The program featured real-life locations such as the Daikanransha ferris wheel, Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Big Sight, and Fuji TV. The location also features prominently in the anime Genshiken, in which the main characters attend Comiket, an event held at Tokyo Big Sight.

How to get to Odaiba? Check out this map:

Source: Japan-guide

This is a video post of the night life of Ginza and Shibuya

It’s a nice mass of concrete, really.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, commonly known as Tsukiji fish market (Japanese: 築地市場, Tsukiji shijō) is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and also one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind.

The market is located in Tsukiji in central Tokyo, and is a major attraction for foreign visitors (few Japanese casually visit the market), especially for visitors who have arrived from Narita International Airport; the best times to visit are between 5:00AM and 9:00AM.

You can get a variety of the most fresh AAA sushi grade fish here, simply because they’re just fresh out of the sea. It is definitely any sushi chefs and chef’s dream to be here. Usually bidding for fish starts early in the morning with the best choice going to the highest bidder in the market. You wouldn’t want to miss it but you would need to wake up extraordinarily early to catch the action.

The Tsukiji fish market is located near the Tsukijishijō Station on the Oedo subway line and Tsukiji Station on the Hibiya subway line. There are two distinct sections of the market as a whole. The “inner market” (jonai shijo) is the licensed wholesale market, where the auctions and most of the processing of the fish take place, and where licensed wholesale dealers (approximately 900 of them) operate small stalls. The “outer market” (jogai shijo) is a mixture of wholesale and retail shops that sell Japanese kitchen tools, restaurant supplies, groceries, and seafood, and many restaurants, especially sushi restaurants. Most of the shops in the outer market close by the early afternoon, and in the inner market even earlier.

Sensoji Temple is one of the largest and oldest Buddhist temples in Tokyo and is a popular spot for Matsuris. At the entrance, the common sight of a large paper lantern imposes itself over visitors who wishes to enter to pay their respects to the Buddha residing within. The lantern is painted red and black suggesting thunderclouds and lightning, which is why the entrance is aptly named as kaminari-mon or “Thunder Gate”.

Thousands of visitors, local and international, visit the temple yearly for the matsuri festivals. Due to such hot reception, naturally the temple grounds are built to cater to tourists with souvenir shops, traditional shops selling pro-Japanese and religious artifacts and restaurants serving traditional noodles and local cuisines.

If you’re looking for divine consultation, there is a Kau Cim (fortune telling) place within the temple grounds that will satisfy all your life questions. You just have to pay a compulsory donation of 100yen to get in, of course. Querents, or the person fore telling your future, will shake labeled sticks from enclosed metal containers and read the corresponding answers they retrieve from one of 100 possible drawers. It’s an experience that is nothing ordinary if you’re into that sort of thing.

Where else would you go for your electronics, if not Akihabara? The town is known as Japan’s electric town or the Akihabara Electric Town (秋葉原電気街, Akihabara Denki Gai).

It is located less than five minutes by rail from Tokyo Station. Its name is frequently shortened to Akiba in Japan. While there is an official locality named Akihabara nearby, part of Taitō-ku, the area known to most people as Akihabara (including the railway station of the same name) is actually Soto-Kanda, a part of Chiyoda-ku.

Akihabara is best-known as one of the largest shopping areas on Earth for electronic, computer, anime, and otaku goods, including new and used items. New items are mostly to be found on the main street, Chūōdōri, with many kinds of used items found in the back streets of Soto Kanda 3-chōme. First-hand parts for PC-building are readily available from a variety of stores. Tools, electrical parts, wires, microsized cameras and similar items are found in the cramped passageways of Soto Kanda 1-chōme (near the station). Foreign tourists tend to visit the big name shops like Laox or other speciality shops near the station, though there is more variety and lower prices at locales a little further away. Akihabara gained some fame through being home to one of the first stores devoted to personal robots and robotics.

Manga, Animation, Games, Electronics and all the other weirdest, strangest gadgets in the world can be found here.

How to get there?

kihabara Station is a busy station on the Yamanote Line loop, served by the JR Yamanote Line, JR Keihin-Tohoku Line, JR Sobu Line, the Tsukuba Express and the Hibiya Subway Line.

From Tokyo Station
3 minutes and 130 Yen by JR Yamanote Line or JR Keihin-Tohoku Line.

From Shinjuku Station
Take the orange colored JR Chuo Line (rapid service) from Shinjuku to Ochanomizu Station (10 minutes) and transfer to the yellow colored JR Sobu Line (local service) for one more station to Akihabara (2 minutes). The one way fare is 160 Yen.

Via Japan Guide

Roppongi (六本木, roppongi?) is a district of Minato Ward, Tokyo, Japan, famous as home to the rich Roppongi Hills area, an active night club scene, and a relatively large presence of Western tourists and expatriates, though the vast majority of visitors and residents are Japanese. It is in the southern portion of the circle described by the Yamanote Line, south of Akasaka and north of Azabu.

The area around Roppongi is a popular night spot for most foreigners. Reason being, the district seems to cater to them, with various types of cuisines and bars that attracts the foreigners’ club. Among the Western expatriate community, it tends to be favoured by business people and financial workers as well as off-duty military.

In the past, Roppongi had a reputation as an area with high Yakuza presence, whether as customers at Roppongi establishments, conducting business, or managing or owning clubs and bars in the area. Although still exerting some influence in Roppongi, in recent times they appear to have shifted much of their presence to other districts in the Tokyo area. Many establishments in Roppongi are now owned by Africans.

Here is a nice map courtesy of Japan-Guide.com:

Besides being a night spot, Roppongi actually has a lot more to offer. There are various museums, art centers, skyscrapers, a garden and a bountiful of good restaurants around; some old and some new additions to the city. It is definitely one of the places to check out if you’re in Japan.

How to get to Roppongi?

Roppongi can be reached by the Hibiya and Oedo Subway Lines (Roppongi Station) and the Nanboku Subway Line (Roppongi-Icchome Station).

From Tokyo Station:
15 minutes, 160 Yen by Marunouchi and Hibiya Subway Lines via Kasumigaseki Station.

From Shinjuku Station:
10 minutes, 210 Yen by direct Oedo Subway Line.

It’s not all skyscrapers in Tokyo. Asakusa is a district where most of the old Tokyo lies preserved. Asakusa (浅草, Asakusa) is a district in Taitō Ward, Tokyo, Japan, most famous for the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several more temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals.

For most of the twentieth century, Asakusa was the major entertainment district in Tokyo. The golden years of Asakusa are vividly portrayed in Kawabata’s novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa. In its role as a pleasure district, it has now been surpassed by Shinjuku and other colorful areas of the city.

With so many religious establishments in the area, there are frequent matsuri (Shinto festivals) in Asakusa, as each temple or shrine hosts at least one matsuri per year, if not per season. The largest and most popular is the Sanja Matsuri in late spring, in which roads are closed from dawn until late in the evening.

In a city where there are very few buildings older than 50 years (owing to wartime bombing), Asakusa has a greater concentration of 1950s-60s buildings than most other areas of Tokyo. There are traditional ryokan (guest-houses), homes, and small-scale apartment buildings dotted throughout the district.

In keeping with a peculiarly Tokyo tradition, Asakusa hosts a major cluster of domestic kitchenware stores on Kappabashi-dori, which is visited by many Tokyoites for essential supplies.

Next to the Sensoji temple grounds is a small carnival complex with rides, booths, and games, called Hanayashiki. The neighborhood theatres specialize in showing classic Japanese films, as many of the tourists are elderly Japanese.

Cruises down the Sumida River depart from a wharf only a five minute walk from the temple.

Because of its colorful location, downtown credentials, and relaxed atmosphere (by Tokyo standards), Asakusa is a popular accommodation choice for budget travellers.

Asakusa is also home to one of the geisha districts in Tokyo.

This is the home of the harajuku girls and Japan’s most extreme teenage sub culture fashion. You can see all sorts of uber fashion here that is unique only to modern Japan. Harajuku is the teenager’s capital of Japan.
\
Harajuku (原宿 “meadow lodging”) is the common name for the area around Harajuku Station on the Yamanote Line in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan. Harajuku is an area between Shinjuku and Shibuya. Local landmarks include the headquarters of NHK, Meiji Shrine, and Yoyogi Park.

The area has two main shopping streets, Omotesandō and Takeshita-dōri. The latter caters to youth fashions and has many small stores selling Gothic Lolita, visual kei, rockabilly, hip-hop, and punk outfits, in addition to fast food outlets and so forth.

In recent years Omotesandō has seen a rise in branches of expensive fashion stores such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Prada. The avenue is sometimes referred to as “Tokyo’s Champs-Élysées”. Until 2004, one side of the avenue was occupied by the Dōjunkai Aoyama apāto, Bauhaus-inspired apartments built in 1927 after the 1923 Kantō earthquake. In 2006 the buildings were controversially destroyed by Mori Building and replaced with the “Omotesando Hills shopping mall, designed by Tadao Ando. The area known as “Ura-Hara” (back streets of Harajuku) is a center of Japanese fashion for younger people — brands such as A Bathing Ape and Undercover have shops in the areaHarajuku street style is promoted in Japanese and international publications such as Fruits.

In the 1980s large numbers of street performers and wildly dressed teens including takenoko-zoku (竹の子族, “bamboo-shoot kids”) gathered on Omotesandō and the street that passes through Yoyogi Park on Sundays when the steets were closed to traffic. The streets were reopened to traffic in the 90s. Small groups of rockabillies and gosurori still gather on Sundays.

Shinjuku (新宿区, Shinjuku-ku?) is one of the 23 special wards, or municipalities that makes up metropolis Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative centre, housing the busiest train station in the world (Shinjuku Station), and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration center for the Tokyo Metropolis. The area around Shinjuku Station is home to a large concentration of department stores, specialist electronic and camera shops, cinemas, restaurants and bars. Many international hotels have a large presence here.

To summarize Shinjuku, geographically, can as follows; Areas of Shinjuku include:

* Ichigaya: A commercial area in eastern Shinjuku, site of the Ministry of Defense.
* Golden Gai: An area of tiny shanty-style bars and clubs known for the artistic quality of its patrons. Musicians, artists, actors and directors are known to gather here, and the ramshackle walls of the bars are literally plastered with movie posters.
* Kabukichō: A district well-known for bars, restaurants and red-light district with street prostitutes, brothels, and other sexual commerce. Located northeast of Shinjuku Station.
* Nishi-shinjuku: Tokyo’s largest skyscraper district. Several of the tallest buildings in Tokyo are located in this area, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, KDDI Building and Park Tower. Located west of Shinjuku Station.
* Okubo: Tokyo’s best-known Korean district.
* Shinanomachi: On the southern edge of Shinjuku, close to the National Stadium, also known as Olympic Stadium, Tokyo and Meiji-Jingu Stadium (where the Yakult Swallows baseball team plays).
* Shinjuku Gyoen is a large park, 58.3 hectares, 3.5 km in circumference, blending Japanese traditional, English Landscape and French Formal style gardens.
* Shinjuku ni-chōme: Tokyo’s best-known gay district.
* Waseda: Surrounding Waseda University, one of the most prestigious private universities in Japan. Nearby Takadanobaba is a major student residential and nightlife area.

To summarize Shinjuku in words, this is definitely one of the place you want to be if you are visiting Tokyo. This is where all the fashion, fun and people you hear about are. In other words, this place is rockin’. Walking down the streets of Shinjuku will leave you feeling like you’re going into a different world all together.

Sanja Matsuri is also known as the Festival of Asakusa Shrine. It is the most flamboyant and among the biggest,liveliest festivals in Japan. I would equate the Sanja Matsuri to Mardi Gras because of the similarities - half naked people parades all over the place. It’s really one of the most exciting and mind opening experience to go to a Sanja Matsuri. It is in this festivals that the Geishas and Yakuzas come out to play. It’s a festival dedicated to them almost. You will see men with tattooed bodies parading, geisha’s performing their dances.

The festival pulls over 1.5million people to celebrate together. It is definitely going to be sweaty so you have a lot of reasons to join the crowd to take off your clothes but only if you are a guy of course. I don’t know if girls are allowed to, unlike in Brazil or Costa Rica or …you know, where Mardi Gras is celebrated :P

So the festival starts with a lot of procession, that goes through many districts in Tokyo to the Asakusa Shrine. A little history about it is that 3 fisherman found a statue of a deity, which is now placed in Asakusa shrine, in their fishing nets one day and they have been revered ever since. The festival is an ongoing 3 day celebration too, you can imagine that it is a non-stop entertainment and fun and with all the colorful characters around you’ll be stoke to find that this is certainly a deviation from the normal reserve Japanese culture.

I would SO like to go see it. Anyone wants to buy me a ticket for next year? :P