Marunouchi Oazo

One of the areas of Tokyo that has changed the most in the last decade is without a doubt the stately old Marunouchi, between Tokyo station and the Imperial palace. The area has seen several huge new builds and massive renovations that shows off the areas importance as the financial center of Tokyo. Celebrating 10 years in 2014 is the Ozao, a collection of four interlocked building of which the two largest have 29 floors above ground and four floors below ground. The name, in typical Japanese fashion is an abbreviation of the O in Otemachi (the neighboring area to the north of Marunouchi) enclosing, the slightly modified AZ of the Japanese word for play (“asobu”), it also stands a short for Office and Amenity Zone, as well as the obvious connection with the word oasis. A lot of Japanese concepts, buildings, services and organization make their names like this!

The public area of Oazo has quite a few shops, free wifi, cafes and one of the bigger book stores in Tokyo, the Maruzen, with a large and fairly good selection of foreign language books (mostly English and French). The book store itself has an in store gallery that often has nice exhibitions of luxury oriented arts and craft.

To get to Oazo simply exit Tokyo Station at any of the Marunouchi exits and turn right. Walk down to the end corner of the station and you will find the massice Oazo right in front of you. I am sure there will be plenty of events and celebrations come August and September when they celebrate Oazo’s birthday!