Ginza 銀座

Ginza was Japan’s first western-style shopping street, rebuilt in brick after a fire in 1872, and it has never stopped being the place where the country shows its most polished face. The main avenue, Chuo-dori, is a parade of flagship buildings that double as architecture: Hermès behind glass bricks by Renzo Piano, the Mikimoto facade punctured with irregular windows, the Ginza Six complex with its rooftop garden and basement Noh theater. Wako’s clock tower on the Yon-chome crossing has marked the hour since 1932 and remains the neighborhood’s unofficial meeting point.

The surprise is how much of Ginza is small and old. Behind the avenue, the numbered side streets hold tiny sushi counters, bars with eight seats and a 90-year-old master, galleries on the fifth floor of nondescript buildings and stationery shops that have sold brushes since the Edo period. Come on a weekend afternoon when the avenue becomes a pedestrian zone and cafes set tables on the asphalt, eat lunch at a counter you could never afford at night, and stay until the neon lights the kabuki theater at Higashi-Ginza.