Nihonbashi日本橋

One day · Nihonbashi

Nihonbashi, the old firms: a department store opening, a woodblock in the paper shop, sake from a merchant, a kintsugi lesson and a kimono measured for you

Nihonbashi is where Tokyo's oldest businesses are, and where most of them still trade from the same block. The day below is built on operators we have verified one by one: the bell at Mitsukoshi, a woodblock workshop in a paper merchant's gallery, sake at a shop that has sold it since the Edo period, a lesson in mending with gold, and a kimono shop that will measure you. It ends on the water. Book the woodblock, the kintsugi and the kimono; the rest are open doors.

Nihonbashi · 7 stops

One day · Marunouchi, Imperial Palace, Nihonbashi

Edo under the towers: the palace gardens, the red-brick station, and the shops that have sold one thing for three hundred years

Tokyo was Edo, and Edo was a castle; this is the day that shows you where it stood and what grew around it. A morning inside the castle walls, in a garden that costs nothing; lunch on the avenue the city's businesspeople walk; an afternoon at the bridge every road was measured from and in the shops that have sold knives, paper and dashi since the shogunate. It is the most orderly day in the city, and the one that makes the rest of Tokyo make sense.

Marunouchi & Tokyo Station · Nihonbashi · 8 stops

Nihonbashi Bridge日本橋

The zero milestone of Japan — a 1911 stone bridge with bronze kirin, under an expressway that is finally coming down.

30 min · Nihombashi (Ginza / Tozai / Asakusa lines) or Mitsukoshimae (Ginza / Hanzomon lines)

Mitsukoshi Nihombashi Main Store日本橋三越本店

Japan's first department store, a 1914 palace with a pipe organ, a five-storey atrium and lions at the door.

60 min · Mitsukoshimae (Ginza / Hanzomon lines), direct from the basement

The old shops of Nihonbashi日本橋の老舗

One thing, made for centuries — knives, chopsticks, seaweed, dried bonito, paper, brushes, all within four blocks.

90 min · Mitsukoshimae (Ginza / Hanzomon lines)

Artizon Museumアーティゾン美術館

The Bridgestone collection reborn in a 2020 tower — Impressionists to Japanese modernism, in generous rooms.

90 min · Kyobashi (Ginza line) or Tokyo (Yaesu side)

Fukutoku Shrine and the Coredo lanes福徳神社とコレド室町の路地

A shrine older than Edo, rebuilt among the towers, with a stone-paved lane of lanterns beside it.

20 min · Mitsukoshimae (Ginza / Hanzomon lines), Coredo Muromachi exit

Nihonbashi river cruise日本橋川クルーズ

Under the bridge, along the stone walls of Edo, and out onto the Sumida in a low open boat.

45 min · Nihombashi (Ginza / Tozai / Asakusa lines), exit B12 to the pier