The Gaijin Ghost

On the flip side of Umeda and Osaka Castle are the districts of Namba and Tennoji. Namba plunges the visitor into a world of neon signs and savory Osaka food. You might also see some giant heads — lion, human, or otherwise — in places like Namba Yasaka Shrine and Kushikatsu Daruma.

Our Anthony Bourdain food tour of Namba started with curried rice at Jiyuken. Other well-known sights in the Dotonbori area include the clown drummer Kuidaore Taro, the mechanical crab above the original Kani Doraku shop, the oval-shaped Ferris wheel over the Don Quijote store, and the Glico running man sign.

Tsutenkaku (“Tower Reaching Heaven”) is Tennoji’s main centerpiece. Yet the newer Abeno Harukas, Japan’s second-tallest building, is within walking distance, and it reaches much higher. Tennoji is also the Osaka Loop Line station you would head for if you were traveling to Kansai International Airport, where the low-cost carrier Peach operates out of Terminal 2.

Over in the Osaka Bay area, you can climb the steps to the top of Japan’s smallest mountain in Tempozan Park. In the pictures below, you’ll see cherry blossoms blooming in the park, plus the view from the Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel, and a walk along the waterfront. (The replica of Denmark’s Little Mermaid statue moved from water to land in 2017.)

It’s been years since I visited the famous Kaiyukan aquarium and I need to do a revenge trip. All you’ll really see of it here is the march of the penguins outside.

A friend and I also ate okonomiyaki at the nearby Naniwa Kuishinbo Yokocho food theme park, though that signature Osaka dish and the jinbei-zame (whale shark) at Kaiyukan are criminally absent from this gallery of 90 photos. You will, however, see glimpses of local landmarks like Kyocera Dome and Minato Bridge.

You’ll often hear how Osaka is split up into two main areas: Kita and Minami, meaning “North” and “South,” or uptown and downtown, respectively. As Japan’s third largest city, however, Osaka extends far beyond these two areas.

The sprawling, one-square-kilometer park surrounding Osaka Castle is a district unto itself. Meanwhile, Kema Sakuranomiya Park, a popular spot for cherry blossom viewing in the spring, stretches over four kilometers along the Ogawa River.

Kita is synonymous with Umeda, where the 40-story Umeda Sky Building towers on two legs over the city like an architectural monster. It’s just a ten-minute walk from Osaka Station, and it has a rooftop observatory with a 360-degree, open-air view of the Yodogawa River and more.

Across the river (which you can cross on foot via the Juso Bridge), the rest of Northern Osaka holds far-flung sights like Expo ’70 Commemorative Park and Minoh Park. The former gives a peek into the city’s history as a World Expo site, with Osaka due to host the expo again in 2025. The latter is where you can hike to a waterfall and eat momiji tempura (deep-fried maple leaves, sadly not pictured in this gallery of 85 photos).

At the expo site, you can still see Taro Okamoto’s impressive, three-faced Tower of the Sun monument from 1970. You can also ride the Redhorse Osaka Wheel and visit the LaLaport Expo City shopping mall, where a branch of Aiduya, the shop that invented the local specialty of takoyaki, inhabits the food court.

In the springtime, the promenade along the Meguro River is one of Tokyo’s most popular cherry blossom viewing spots. It’s about a mile-and-a-half walk from Meguro Station (on the Yamanote Line) to Naka-Meguro Station (on the Hibiya Line). Most of it is filled with blossoms during the annual bloom, which you’ll see here in 60 photos.

On the other side of Naka-Meguro Station, you’ll find the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, one of six locations worldwide. Like the original Roastery in Seattle, it aspires to be the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of coffee. As it towers above all, the copper cask here has a Japanese twist in that’s meant to evoke the sakura trees outside.

At the third-floor bar, Arriviamo, you can sip espresso martinis, or take one out on the deck and admire the cherry blossoms from an elevated position. The real highlight for foodies might be the rectangular, Roman-style pizzas at the first-floor bakery, Princi.

Just be aware that the Roastery does reach capacity during cherry blossom season. Unless you get lucky and snag the last online reservation (as I did), you may be turned away.

These pics are mainly from the 2024 season, when the Roastery was celebrating its fifth anniversary. However, a few are from 2023, when a huevos rancheros meal at Breakfast Club Tokyo led to my initial discovery of this Starbucks.

Tokyo Tower is a prime example of the duplitecture, or duplicated architecture, phenomenon in buildings across Japan. Erected in Minato Ward in 1958, it resembles an “international orange” variant of the Eiffel Tower. It’s now the country’s second-tallest structure after the Skytree across town.

In this gallery, you’ll see 115 photos of Tokyo Tower and other surrounding landmarks, going back as far as 2010–2011. At that time, the tower had a wax museum inside it and statues of dogs from the first Japanese Antarctic expedition outside it. Both vacated the premises in 2013, though you can still see sculptor Takeshi Ando’s other famous dog statue, Hachiko, in Shibuya.

From the tower’s observatories, you’ll see the grounds of Zojoji Temple and nearby high-rises, such as Atago Green Hills, Roppongi Hills, and Tokyo Midtown. There are two observatories, with the main deck and top deck providing beautiful sunset views and putting you at 150 and 250 meters, respectively.

A look-down window gives a dizzying view of the lattice tower’s framework, where some 600 steps stretch to the city street below. At night, the five-way intersection of streets on one side takes on an orangish glow, accentuating the intersection’s starfish-like appearance even more.

Tokyo Tower provides a scenic backdrop for the main temple hall at Zojoji, where Jizo statues commemorate the souls of children lost in pregnancy. The nearby World Trade Center Building, which once supplied views of the tower, closed in 2021 and has since been demolished.

Japan’s new tallest building, Mori JP Tower, opened in Azabudai Hills in late 2023, and it has a free sky lobby with alternate views from the Roppongi side. That’s where the American Embassy, the historic Hotel Okura, and Reiyukai Shakaden Temple are all located. The temple featured prominently in the music video for “#thatPOWER” by will.i.am and Justin Bieber.

In the basement of Azabudai Hills is teamLab Borderless, the world’s most-visited museum. You can read more about it here.

There’s more to see in the Roppongi Station area than just Roppongi Hills. For starters, you can visit the National Art Center, the wavy glass building that—despite being located near Tokyo Midtown—served as the facade of the Osaka Continental in John Wick: Chapter 4.

The National Art Center has showcased everything from Van Gogh’s self-portraits (in The Adventure of Becoming an Artist exhibition, 2010) to Monet’s “Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son” (in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, 2011). During its 10th anniversary in 2017, the museum held the camera-friendly Yayoi Kusama: My Eternal Soul exhibition, where Kusama’s colorful polka dot art was on display with flower and pumpkin installations.

In and around the Tokyo Midtown complex, you’ll find dining options like the Indian curry buffet at Nirvana New York and the Michelin Guide ramen at Iruca Tokyo. The latter opened in 2021 around the corner from where the pufferfish chain Guenpin Fugu once operated.

A life-size bust of the King of Monsters invaded the complex twice during the “Midtown Meets Godzilla” event and its sequel in 2014 and 2015. Over the years, the streets behind Tokyo Midtown and its back lawn have also hosted some beautiful seasonal illuminations, with fall colors and cherry blossoms lit up at night.

In addition to those sights, the 70 pictures here show the photo exhibition space, Fujifilm Square; a local Catholic church, the Franciscan Center Chapel; and a few spots along Gaien Higashi Dori, the street that leads to Tokyo Tower. That street is where you’ll find the Hard Rock Cafe and the Roppongi branch of the popular discount shop, Don Quijote.

Readers of Robert Whiting’s book, Tokyo Underworld, might recognize Nicola’s Pizza House as the name of Japan’s oldest American-run pizza restaurant.

One of the coolest feats of architecture you’re likely to see in Japan’s capital is the Tokyo International Forum. The winner of a public design competition, the International Forum is a complex that consists of a long, glass, boat-shaped building, flanked by four event halls. It opened in 1996 and was the brainchild of Uruguay-born U.S. architect Rafael Viñoly, who passed away in 2023.

An escalator and inclined walkway lead up from the Forum’s basement lobby to the top lounge on the seventh floor. All along the way, you’ll have a view of the huge, wide-open atrium, with catwalks stretching across it and light filtering in from the curved glass wall.

There are conference rooms on the upper floors, and at any given time, one or more of the catwalks may be closed. However, even if you have to reroute, the structure is impressive from almost any angle. Its roof truss almost resembles the spine or ribcage of some prehistoric behemoth, a fossil that futurists have somehow repurposed as the framework for a cutting-edge arts center.

Hall A has hosted the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra’s Star Wars cinema concerts, among other events. While the International Forum makes up the bulk of these 85 pictures, you’ll also see some glimpses here of nearby landmarks like Yurakucho Station, Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, Hibiya Chanter, the Imperial Hotel, the Peninsula Tokyo, and more. In 2018, the Toho Walk of Fame gave way to Hibiya Godzilla Square and a new statue of the King of Monsters.

The Ginza shopping district isn’t just a place to buy brand-name goods on the most expensive real estate in Tokyo. It’s also a place where you can dine at Michelin-starred restaurants — if you can get a reservation.

Seiko House Ginza is the district’s best-known landmark. It’s the official name for that clock tower positioned atop the Wako department store building at the 4-chome intersection in Ginza. We’ll loop back on the sight of it more than once in this gallery of 80 photos.

Not far from the clock tower is the Ginza Six shopping complex, which was decorated with hanging pumpkins from artist Yayoi Kusama when it first opened in 2017. The Tsutaya Books there doubles as an art gallery, while the rooftop garden gives you an elevated view of buildings along Chuo Dori (Center Street).

Down the street, the beer hall in the Ginza Lion building survived the air raids of World War II to become Japan’s oldest beer hall. Our food and drink tour of Ginza also encompasses three-star Michelin sushi at Sushi Yoshitake, a cotton candy cocktail at the fairy-themed Tír na nÓg, one-star Michelin yakitori at Bird Land, omelet rice at the revolving Ginza Sky Lounge, soup curry at Sapporo Dominica, and one-star Michelin ramen at Ginza Hachigou.

The pics in this gallery span over a decade, so you’ll glimpse some sights here that are no longer around, such as the Sony Building, Tokyo’s flagship Gap store, the Serpenti snake on the Bulgari building, and the architectural marvel of Nakagin Capsule Tower.

Other highlights include the Nissan showroom, the Kabuki-za theater, and a robot receptionist at Henn na Hotel. While the east side of Tokyo Station is technically just outside Ginza, it’s close enough for the new Tokyo Midtown Yaesu complex to be shown here, too.

The Meiji Shrine Outer Garden, known in Japanese as Meiji Jingu Gaien, is an area famous for its ginkgo tree avenue, which comes alive with brilliant yellow in autumn. The avenue is accessible via Gaiemmae Station or Aoyama-Itchome Station on the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line. When you reach the end of it, you’ll hit Jingu Stadium, the home field of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team.

Though it’s technically not part of the garden, Japan National Stadium is in close proximity. So, you’ll see it on the Meiji Jingu Gaien map and in this gallery of 60 photos, too. The stadium was the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2020/2021 Summer Olympics.

Across the street, you’ll find an Instagrammable Olympic rings display outside the Japan Olympic Museum. Inside, you’ll find exhibits about the development of the Games, beginning with their origin in ancient Greece, when the athletes competed naked and slathered in olive oil. There’s also a wall of Olympic torches and replicas of medals you can put around your neck.

Nearby dining options include World Breakfast Allday and the increasingly ubiquitous Shake Shack. Tokyo Sando, which served good sandwiches and peanut butter milkshakes, unfortunately closed in 2023.

You can see more pics of Meiji Jingu Gaien’s ginkgo-lined avenue here and here, and more pics of the square surrounding the Olympic Museum here. The stadium receives additional focus in this post, where I go inside and reckon with it on the anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku disaster.

This gallery of 110 photos picks up where Tokyo 2022: Part 1 left off, showing a series of outings from August to December.

In 2022, the late manga artist, Shigeru Mizuki, was the focus of two exhibitions in town celebrating the centennial of his birth (on March 8, 1922) and his influential, yokai-themed work. One event took place at the Tokyo View sky gallery in Roppongi, and the other was held at the Chofu City Cultural Hall.

The Roppongi event was a good excuse to sample some deep-dish pizza at Rio Brewing & Co. Bistro and Garden in the Tokyo Midtown complex. You can also find statues around Chofu of Mizuki’s GeGeGe no Kitaro characters, and there was even a sand sculpture produced of them on the grounds at Fuda-Tenjin Shrine.

In Shibuya, a Stranger Things pop-up cafe set up shop in the same building where a branch of Singapore’s Bao by Ce La Vi bar still holds court on the roof. From there, you can get an open-air view of the Shibuya Scramble and the nearby shopping center, Miyashita Park, which has its own rooftop garden stretching lengthwise along the train tracks. It’s just down the street from the toy store that hosted the “Star Wars: Jump to Hyperspace” event.

Among the many miscellaneous pics in this gallery, you’ll also see some shots of Yokufukai Hospital (which appeared in the horror movie The Grudge) along with the new Tokyo Bay Shiomi Prince Hotel near Tokyo Disney Resort. Other highlights include a trip to Rocco’s New York Style Pizza, Thanksgiving turkey at Bubby’s New York in Kichijoji, and the winter lights displays in Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Park, Shinjuku Southern Terrace, and Shibuya Stream.

You can read more about some of these events in my 10 Highlights of Tokyo in 2022 post.

There were so many highlights of Tokyo in 2022 that I needed two photo galleries to hold them all.

This first gallery of 130 pics shows Shinjuku in the snow, Taishoji Temple, cherry blossoms, hydrangeas, and wisteria in Chofu, and Shibuya Hikarie during the 25th-anniversary farewell tour of the musical Rent. You’ll also see the sculpture garden and halls in the Inokashira Park Zoo, where Nishimochi Kitamura (1884–1987) created the Peace Memorial Statue for Nagasaki.

Summer 2022 brought trips to Blu Jam Cafe (now closed) and Ebisu Garden Place, along with a walking tour of the Nishi-Shinjuku skyscraper district. There, I took some fresh pics of Robert Indiana’s LOVE statue and the new Sompo Museum of Art building.

The museum has Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) on permanent display, but in January 2023, it got roped into a lawsuit by the heirs of a Jewish banker who allegedly sold it under duress in Nazi Germany circa 1934.

Back at Shinjuku Station, the Keio Sky Garden holds a rooftop view of the Cocoon Building and the cluster of skyscrapers around it. Hop on the train to Harajuku Station, as I did, and you can explore the new With Harajuku shopping center, then eat at the nearby Pizzeria Spontini.

In late July, we dined at the Odaiba branch of the restaurant Bill’s and visited Small Worlds Tokyo, the world’s largest indoor miniature theme park, in Ariake. The gallery ends with a summer stroll down Center Gai in Shibuya and a meal at 800 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza, located outside the New South Gate back at Shinjuku Station.

It’s no secret that Walt Disney originally conceived of EPCOT as an “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.” However, what the future looked like in 1982 (when the park first opened) came to resemble more of a retro-futuristic vision of tomorrow as the years went on.

Maybe that’s why the front half of EPCOT, formerly known as Future World, has since been rethemed at the Disney World resort in Florida. This gallery of 125 photos covers two pre-pandemic trips to the park before that happened.

The first trip was in 2017 while the Universe of Energy attraction was still open. The second was in 2019 for the International Flower and Garden Festival, when EPCOT was alive with color and topiaries of Disney characters.

Among the rides you’ll see pictured here are Spaceship Earth, Test Track, Soarin’, Living with the Land, Journey into Imagination with Figment, and The Seas with Nemo and Friends. The main dining highlight is a character meal at the Garden Grill Restaurant in The Land Pavilion.

In World Showcase and the back half of EPCOT, you’ll see three other attractions: The American Adventure, Frozen Ever After, and Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros. Each of the 11 countries represented in the pavilions of World Showcase draws inspiration from one or more landmarks in real-life travel destinations, such as Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima.

A clockwise tour of World Showcase will take you through Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, America, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Some of these countries are underserved compared to others here. To really do them all justice, we’d need to do a post-pandemic revenge trip to EPCOT.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, right around the time trips to Disney World stopped being cool in the eyes of the young Gaijin Ghost (then just a Floridian teen). I wouldn’t make it to the park for the first time until 2017 when Pandora - The World of Avatar opened.

This gallery of 85 photos is devoted to everything at Animal Kingdom besides Pandora. Take the tram in from the parking lot with me, and the first thing you’ll see inside is the park’s centerpiece, the Tree of Life. The queue for “It’s Tough to Be a Bug,” the show inside the artificial baobab tree, also gives visitors a closer look at the animal carvings in its trunk.

Across the bridge from there, you can time-travel back to 2019 when the DinoLand U.S.A. area and its star attraction, Dinosaur, were open. (They may already be extinct if you’re reading this past 2024.)

Disney characters in this gallery include Launchpad McQuack from DuckTales, Kevin, Russell, and Dug from Up, and Baloo and King Louie from The Jungle Book. The regular meet-and-greets with some of these characters are now a thing of the past, as is the “Hakuna Matata Time Dance Party” greeting that Timon and Rafiki from The Lion King used to do with kids.

Of course, no trip to Animal Kingdom would be complete without some actual animal sightings. Here, you’ll see authentic Florida flamingos (in “Africa”), a gorilla on the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail, and crocodiles, Ankole cattle, giraffes, and wildebeests on the Kilimanjaro Safaris tour.

Other highlights: lunch at Tiffins Restaurant, the Expedition Everest ride in Asia, and shows like “Finding Nemo - The Musical,” “Festival of the Lion King,” and “Rivers of Light.” When you see the sign for Kali River Rapids, you’ve reached the end.