Thirteen stops on the Yamanote loop

The Yamanote Line goes around central Tokyo with thirty stations, one after another, and a train that never leaves it passes all of them. It is a good way to see how different the parts of the city are, because each station sits in a different neighborhood. Here are thirteen of them.

South: Shinagawa to Tokyo

Near Takanawa Gateway, the newest station on the loop, Sengakuji is the temple where the 47 Ako Roshi are buried, the loyal retainers who avenged their lord's death in the early 18th century. Their story, which began with a sword attack in 1701, is one of the best known in Japan. At Hamamatsucho, the Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Garden is among the oldest surviving daimyo gardens in Tokyo, with carp in its central pond and skyscrapers all around it.

At Tokyo Station the old post office has been given a new life. JP Tower and KITTE were built around the preserved exterior of the 1931 Tokyo Central Post Office, and the lower floors, which are the old building, are now shops and restaurants.

East: Akihabara to Komagome

Akihabara grew out of a postwar black market and became an electronics district, with shops that sell everything from home appliances and PC parts to anime and game goods. Two stops later Ueno Park spreads out from the west exit, 53 hectares of it, with museums and a zoo. The Tokyo National Museum, which was founded in 1872, is the oldest and largest museum in Japan, with about 120,000 items.

At Nippori, climb the Goten-zaka slope and the Yuyake Dandan staircase and you come down into Yanaka Ginza, a shopping street of about 170 meters that still looks like the Showa era, where people gather on the steps in the evening to watch the sunset. At Komagome, Rikugien was laid out in 1695 by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, chamberlain to the fifth shogun. Its name refers to six styles of waka poetry, and it was once planned around 88 scenes taken from those poems.

North and west: Sugamo to Shinjuku

Sugamo Jizo-dori is an 800-meter shopping street that grew up as the approach to Kogan-ji temple. People call it Harajuku for grandmothers, and on market days it fills with older shoppers. Ikebukuro has Sunshine City, which opened in 1978 on the former site of Sugamo Prison and has a 60-story tower, an aquarium and an observation deck.

In Shinjuku, Omoide Yokocho is a narrow alley of tiny yakitori and stew stalls under the tracks, which keeps the feel of the black markets that appeared here after the Second World War. A little farther, Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, completed in 1991, stands 243 meters high, and its observation decks on the 45th floor are free and look out to Mount Fuji on clear days.

South-west: Harajuku to Meguro

At Harajuku, Meiji Jingu is a shrine for Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken that you reach in a minute or two from the station, through a tall wooden torii and into a forest grove. It draws more visitors at New Year than any other shrine in Japan. Takeshita Street, about 350 meters of cheap fashion and food stalls, is just outside the other exit.

Shibuya has the scramble crossing, where hundreds of people cross at the same moment every time the lights change, and the bronze statue of Hachiko, the Akita dog that waited for his dead owner every day, which is still one of the most popular meeting places in Tokyo. And just past Ebisu, at Meguro, Hotel Gajoen, founded in 1928, is a wedding venue known for its Showa-era decoration. Its Hundred-Step Stairway corridor is a Tokyo-designated tangible cultural property.

Ride it yourself

The Yamanote Line in the game has all thirty stations, starting at Shinagawa. Japanese mode types the romaji, so you do not need to know the kanji.