Take our user survey and make your voice heard.
Tokyoites went to the poll last week to do their civic duty of picking a new governor. In the end, the people chose Yoichi Masuzoe, who has gone on record with his desire to make Tokyo the “number one city in the world.”
Of course, your city doesn’t toss out the term “mayor” and replace it with “governor” for its elected leader without already having some legitimate claims to greatness. Masuzoe has yet to specify exactly what benchmarks he plans to use in making good on his pledge, but here are nine things for which Japan’s capital already occupies the top spot.
Let’s start with an obvious one: population. Tokyo proper claims over 13 million residents. Add in all the people living in the surrounding, contiguously developed districts, and some estimates for the number of people living in the Tokyo area run as high as 34 million.
Tokyo is also home to the busiest rail station in the world. On an average day, 3.5 million people pass through Shinjuku Station, located on the west side of the Yamanote Loop that circles downtown. Nearly a dozen train and subway lines converge in Shinjuku, whose dense developments of office and entertainment spaces ensure a never-ending flow of workers, shoppers, and drinkers.
All those people need places to work, though, which Tokyo delivers by virtue of having the highest citywide GDP on the planet. The Japanese metropolis’ $1.99 trillion economy is nearly double that of its closest rival, New York, and certain experts expect Tokyo to sit at the top of the list for at least the next decade.
Of course, that monetary splendor is offset by Tokyo also being the most expensive city in the world, according to studies by human resources consulting firm Mercer and English financial newspaper The Economist. Obviously, this isn’t to say that you’ll pay more in Tokyo than anywhere else regardless of what you’re buying. Still, Tokyo did show the highest price for a basket of goods and services, although some contest the results were colored by the high value of the yen compared to other currencies during the years in which the surveys took place. Any way you slice it though, Tokyo is far from a cheap place to live.
With that much money changing hands in Tokyo, a sizeable chunk of it has to be going to dining. While there are countless ramen and beef bowl joints where you can grab some cheap eats, Tokyo is also prepared for gourmets who want to go upscale, with 14 restaurants receiving three stars from the 2013 edition of the Michelin restaurant guide, giving it four more than second-place Paris. In total, 281 restaurants in Japan’s capital have been recognized by the book’s editors, giving the city a total star count of 323, also the most in the world.
As an island nation, fish makes up a large part of the Japanese diet, but all those restaurants can’t be bothered to go out and catch their own seafood. Luckily for them, Tokyo also has the biggest fish market in the world. The Tsukiji Fish Market has become a popular tourist attraction in recent years, but it remains first and foremost a working wholesaler where 2,080 tons of seafood are sold each day for a total of 1.79 billion yen.
Another of Tokyo’s big tourism draws is the Skytree. At 634 meters, it is the world’s tallest tower, which explains why almost two years after its opening, reservations are still highly recommended for those hoping to take the elevator ride up to its observation platform.
If the sky isn’t enough, Tokyo also has a record for stars. The planetarium at the city’s Tamarokuto Science Center is recognized by Guinness as having the world’s most advanced planetarium projector, due to its ability to accurately position representations of 140 million fixed stars.
Finally, we come to perhaps the most unique way in which Tokyo can call itself the world’s best city, its water supply system. On any given day, 4.3 million cubic meters of waters pass through Tokyo’s pipes, with a leakage rate of just 3%, compared to the 10% or more of many of the world’s other metropolises.
Source: Naver Matome
Read more stories from RocketNews24. -- Foreign visitors pick the 20 coolest places in Japan -- Top 20 Places to Catch a Great View in Japan -- Japan: Home to Nine Little-Known Guinness World Records
© RocketNews24
4 Comments
Login to comment
ka_chan
Nope, no way. No 24 hour transit system. Don't think there are top class restaurants of almost every cuisine from around the world. Where is the theater outside of Noh and Kabuki. New York has Broadway, London has Piccadilly. It's very subjective. The list of the "World's Greatest Cities" had Tokyo 5 and was base on the following, Architecture, Arts & culture, Buzz, Food & drink, Quality of life and World status . Above Tokyo was 4: Berlin, 3: Paris, 2: London, and 1 New York. All of this is very subjective anyway. For tourist it seem Kyoto is #1 in Japan from a travel guide. One of the major problems with Tokyo would be that Tokyo does not have enough ex-pats living there compared to the population. I don't see Japan as all that welcoming toward foreign workers.
sfjp330
Welcome to Tokyo. Tiny closet size condos in Tokyo are really, really expensive and there are tens of millions more living on the outskirts who have to commute to the city every single day. Consider how excruciatingly tedious traffic jams must be in Tokyo that people would rather subject themselves to the humiliation of being pushed and females groped into a train full of sweaty body parts than drive to work. And yes, creepy hobos with persistent stenches also exist in Japan, and they also use the subway as their personal offices.
borax
High rents in the center of the city forcing people to move to the outskirts and commute to work is not exactly a phenomenon unique to Tokyo.
All these lists are subjective, what are you gonna do. Tokyo is a fantastic city regardless of anyone's rankings.
nath
Tokoy is indeed one of the great cities of the world. If you have money and live in decent place then there is pretty much nothing you can't see or do in tokyo. Plus it is endlessly fascinating.