What Makes Tokyo a Beautiful City: Top Highlights
Browse more guides: Japan travel | Asia destinations What Makes Tokyo a Beautiful City: Top Highlights Tokyo is rarely on the standard "world's most beautiful cities" list because the beauty isn't the kind you photograph from a tour bus. It is in the small things - the precision of a 6 a.m. tsukemen counter, the silence of Meiji Shrine's torii path at dawn, the way a 14th-century cherry tree at Rikugien Garden is illuminated at night, the way the Tokyo Skytree's lights reflect off the Sumida River, the way 100,000 people cross Shibuya Crossing in a coordinated wave every two minutes without anyone bumping into anyone else. After enough visits, my answer to "what makes Tokyo beautiful" is the dense, layered, micro-scale beauty that rewards travelers who slow down and pay attention. This is the breakdown of what specifically makes Tokyo beautiful, the places where that beauty is most concentrated, and the routing that lets a first-time visitor exp...