Tokyo's Most Iconic Landmarks

Senso-ji is the spiritual heart of old downtown Tokyo, a Buddhist temple dedicated to Kannon, the goddess of mercy. According to legend it was founded after two fishermen pulled a small statue of Kannon from the Sumida River, and a temple has stood here in some form ever since. The present buildings are postwar reconstructions, faithful to the forms lost in the bombing of the city.

Approaching from the great Kaminarimon gate, with its enormous red lantern, you enter Nakamise, a shopping street that has served pilgrims for generations. Vendors sell rice crackers, folding fans and sweet bean cakes along the approach to the main hall. Beyond the second gate the five-story pagoda rises to one side and the incense cauldron sits before the hondo, where visitors waft the smoke toward themselves for health.

The temple is busy from morning to night, yet it never loses its sense of devotion. Come early and you will find worshippers arriving before the crowds, drawing paper fortunes and lighting candles in the quiet.

Tokyo Tower is the older of the city's two great towers, a lattice structure painted in international orange and white and modeled loosely on the Eiffel Tower. Built during Japan's postwar recovery, it stood as the tallest structure in the country for decades and became an enduring emblem of a nation rebuilding and rising.

Despite being surpassed in height by the Skytree, the tower has never lost its affection among residents. It offers two observation levels, and the Main Deck gives sweeping views over the low-rise temple district and the towers of Roppongi and Shiodome beyond. At night the illumination shifts with the seasons and for special occasions.

The tower photographs beautifully from the surrounding streets, framed between buildings or rising behind the grounds of nearby Zojo-ji. Many visitors find the approach as memorable as the ascent itself.

Shibuya Crossing is a scramble intersection outside Shibuya Station where, on each signal change, pedestrians surge across from every direction at once. At peak times thousands cross in a single cycle, umbrellas and shopping bags weaving into a choreography that has become shorthand for Tokyo itself.

The crossing sits at the center of one of the city's great commercial and entertainment districts, ringed by giant video screens, department stores and the neon of countless shops. It has featured in films and photographs so often that many arrive already feeling they know it, only to be surprised by the sheer scale of the human flow.

Around the crossing the neighborhood pulses with fashion boutiques, music venues and restaurants that draw a young crowd late into the night. The statue of the loyal dog Hachiko waits nearby, a favorite meeting point and a story worth knowing before you visit.

For decades the Tsukiji fish market was the largest wholesale seafood market in the world, its predawn tuna auctions the stuff of legend. In 2018 the wholesale operations moved to a modern facility at Toyosu, purpose-built with viewing galleries that let visitors watch the auctions and trading floors from above without disrupting the work.

At Toyosu the scale is staggering, with vast climate-controlled halls and observation decks explaining the flow of fish from boat to buyer. The tuna auction, once glimpsed only by the persistent few, can now be viewed through glass by visitors who arrive early enough.

Meanwhile the original Tsukiji site lives on as the Outer Market, a warren of stalls and small restaurants selling knives, dried goods and some of the freshest sushi and street food in the city. Together the two sites tell the story of how a beloved institution modernized without losing its flavor.

Shinjuku Gyoen is one of the city's largest and most graceful gardens, laid out in the early twentieth century on the grounds of a former feudal estate. It blends three distinct styles within its walls: a formal French garden of symmetrical avenues, an English landscape garden of open lawns, and a traditional Japanese garden with ponds, bridges and teahouses.

The park is famous for its cherry blossoms in spring, when a wide range of varieties extends the flowering season across many weeks. In autumn the maples and ginkgo turn the paths gold and crimson, and even in winter the greenhouse shelters tropical plants against the cold.

Because the garden charges admission and closes at set hours, it remains calmer than many public parks, a place for slow walks and picnics on the grass with the towers of Shinjuku rising just beyond the trees.

Zojo-ji is a major Buddhist temple of the Jodo, or Pure Land, sect, and served for centuries as the family temple of the Tokugawa shoguns who ruled Japan from Edo. Several shoguns are entombed in its mausoleum, and the great Sangedatsumon gate at its entrance is among the oldest wooden structures to survive in the city.

The temple grounds sit directly beneath Tokyo Tower, and the juxtaposition of the sweeping temple roofs against the orange lattice above is one of the most striking sights in the city. Rows of small stone statues dedicated to unborn children, adorned with red caps and pinwheels, line one side of the precinct in a quietly moving display.

Throughout the year the temple hosts ceremonies and seasonal events, and its central location makes it an easy pairing with a visit to the tower or a walk through the surrounding Shiba district.