Tokyo Buildings

Unlike in European cities (and I assume most North American cities as well), Japan has pretty lax laws on regulations regarding the look of buildings, this means that within a single block, anywhere in Tokyo you can have every imaginable kind of material, color, look, design or purpose of a building. Old wooden buildings from 1946 can be seen next to a gleaming sky scraper in steel and glass, while in the middle of a busy banking district you might find a lumber yard or a corrugated metal storage shed full of boxes of machine parts. When I first arrived in Tokyo this was probably what surprised me the most, the total lack of uniformity among buildings in the same block or on the same street and such a huge variation in looks and purposes. Some people love this, some people don’t agree with it, but for the most part this is what gives a lot of Tokyo it’s character. Among bigger Japanese cities Tokyo is also special in having a quite noticeable difference in general look and feel among the different areas or wards, at least I feel that there is more variation inside Tokyo than in many other Japanese cities that I have visited.

While walking around Ginza and Tsukiji the other week I took these photos to just show a mixture of buildings and streets in central Tokyo, an area that peaked economically in the 70’s and early 80’s. There’s a handful of older buildings left, and a few newer buildings that really makes this part of the city so varied. I can’t pretend to think that all of these buildings are beautiful, but I wanted to show you something less blingy and maybe more “everyday” boring here on the blog. Personally I think that these old buildings, the holdouts from another age, are the most interesting. I always wonder what kind of people or businesses still call them home? You can also tell that Ginza is a rich area, even their old semi-abandoned buildings are clad in copper, which must have been very pricey back then. As a tourist to Tokyo, these streets are not high on your priority list of places to experience I think! Enjoy!