Ginza is a part of Tokyo that looks highly modern and almost Western in many ways, with long, wide avenues and the classic clock tower atop the Wako Building. However, the entire area was once swampland, filled in hundreds of years ago and then host to the silver mint that the name Ginza comes from.
These days it’s home to boutiques, large department stores, and plenty of cafes and restaurants for visitors who stroll the neighborhood. In fact, it’s been such a window-shopping paradise for so many years that the term “ginbura”, meaning strolling through Ginza, has been a commonly used term since the early 20th century.
The area is compared in many ways to Fifth Avenue, but it’s still resolutely “Japanese” luxury, albeit in a more classic sense. This isn’t the glitz and glam of Roppongi’s new money, but the feel of more sophisticated, refined Japan. That means that you don’t find many young people hanging out in Ginza these days, but there are efforts to change this image, and many new complexes are popping up for both locals and a new wave of Ginza visitors from abroad.
The famous Tsukiji fish market is also just a short walk away, and offers a completely different atmosphere with busy vendors hawking seafood and meat, but they’re also the reason that some of the best food in Tokyo is in nearby Ginza. You can easily do both areas in one day, capturing two world-famous Tokyo hotspots that couldn’t be more different from one another.
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