Page 113 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Japan

Must See

An entrance to the
East Gardens of the
Imperial Palace

INSIDER TIP
Poetry at
the Palace
A poetry reading called
Utakai Hajime is held
in the Imperial Palace
every New Year’s Day.
There is a record of the Browsing through stalls
event having taken selling secondhand books in
place as early as 1267. Jinbocho Booksellers’ District
Today it is attended by
the emperor and broad­
cast live on TV, offering EXPERIENCE MORE
glimpses of the palace.

4 books on Eastern subjects, try
Issei-do or Kitazawa Books;
Jinbocho Booksellers’ for ukiyo-e prints, visit Oya
District Shobo – all are on the south
神保町古本屋街 side of Yasukuni-dori, walking
away from Hakusan-dori.
 G4  Jinbocho Stn, The change in the economic
Toei Mita, Hanzomon
& Toei Shinjuku lines status (as well as pastimes
and priorities) of Tokyo’s
Three of the country’s great university students is evident
universities – Meiji, Chuo, in Jinbocho Booksellers’
and Nihon – started out in District. Shops selling surf-
this area in the 1870s and and snowboards are now
1880s, and soon booksellers everywhere, and music shops
sprang up selling both new selling electric guitars seem as
and used books. At one time numerous as the bookshops.
as many as 50 percent of
Japan’s publishers were
based in this district.
Although only Meiji
University and Nihon Did You Know?
University are still in the
area, dozens of bookshops, The Japanese word
including several selling “tsundoku” means “to
ukiyo-e prints, remain, all buy more books than
clustered around the junction you can ever read.”
of Yasukuni-dori and
Hakusan-dori. For English
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