Autumn 2025. We – Sam and Danny, Michel and Wille, and Timothy – are travelling to Japan for a quite classic tour of the Land of the Rising Sun. We are flying separately as we used miles. On the planning: Tokyo, Kanazawa, Shirakawa, Osaka, and Expo 2025, Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, Hakone, and back to Tokyo. Three weeks plus some extra days.

Prior to the group trip, I – Timothy – am solo in Tokyo. Using artificial intelligence, I concocted a busy four days featuring Ito on the Izu Peninsula and Sawara, also known as Little Edo. I also end this Journey Across Japan with a solo spell in Minato, near Taito and Tamachi Station. 

After my visit to the Toei Animation Museum in Nerima, I decided to go to Tokyo Station, where I wanted to buy the stationmaster Pikachu. 

Tokyo Station

Tokyo Station is one of those places where Tokyo’s history, architecture and energy converge. Set in the Marunouchi district, between the Imperial Palace gardens and the modern skyline of Yaesu, it’s far more than a railway terminal. It’s a historic landmark, a shopping destination, and a microcosm of the city’s constant motion — a place where architecture from 1914 meets the rhythm of high-speed rail and contemporary urban life.

The idea for Tokyo Station dates back to the late nineteenth century, when Tokyo’s railways needed a central hub. Separate termini at Shinbashi and Ueno were no longer practical, and planners wanted something worthy of the capital — a unified gateway for the growing network. Construction finally began in 1908 under the architect Tatsuno Kingo, and six years later the new red-brick building opened to the public. It had four platforms and a grand design inspired by Western architecture but adapted to Japanese proportions. 

The twin domes and arched windows reflected a confidence that matched Japan’s early twentieth-century modernisation. The following year, the Tokyo Station Hotel opened inside the building, introducing a touch of European luxury right beside the platforms.

In the interwar years, the station became the focal point of Japan’s national rail network. The Chūō Main Line was extended here in 1919, and by the 1930s trains were departing every couple of minutes on the city’s busiest lines. 

When the Great Kantō Earthquake struck in 1923, Tokyo Station barely flinched, sheltering thousands of evacuees. Two decades later, the war was less forgiving: in 1945 Allied bombing gutted the upper floors and destroyed the signature domes. The postwar rebuild reduced the building to two storeys and a simpler roofline, which stood for half a century. 

By the 1980s, there were plans to replace it entirely, but public outcry led to preservation — and eventually to a meticulous restoration.

That restoration culminated in 2012, when the original pre-war façade was returned to life, complete with the domes, red brick and decorative flourishes of Tatsuno’s design. The Marunouchi side now opens onto a broad plaza lined with trees and stone paving, leading toward the Imperial Palace. On the Yaesu side, the station is wrapped in a very different aesthetic — all glass, escalators and steel — with the GranTokyo towers and a long canopy known as the GranRoof stretching above the entrances. Between the two, Tokyo Station operates as both a heritage site and a high-tech interchange.

The station as as station

It’s also the beating heart of Japan’s rail system. The world’s first high-speed train, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, began operating here in 1964, connecting Tokyo and Osaka. Over the following decades, more Shinkansen lines followed northward — the Tōhoku, Jōetsu and Hokuriku lines — turning Tokyo Station into the anchor of the country’s vast bullet train network. 

Beneath and above street level, local and regional services fan out in every direction: the Yamanote Line circling the city, the Chūō and Keiyō lines stretching toward the suburbs, and the underground platforms that seem to go deeper with every expansion. 

With over 4,000 train movements per day and hundreds of thousands of passengers, it’s one of the busiest railway stations in the world — but somehow, it still manages to stay remarkably organised.

Shopping

Yet for many people, Tokyo Station is just as memorable for what’s off the platforms. Shopping here is almost an attraction in itself. Beneath the concourse lies First Avenue Tokyo Station, an underground mall packed with boutiques, character stores and confectionery counters. 

Character Street

Among its best-known areas is Tokyo Character Street, a cheerful corridor lined with around thirty shops themed around Japan’s most famous pop culture icons. It’s the kind of place where you can pick up a Rilakkuma notebook, a Hello Kitty travel pouch, or an ultra-limited Studio Ghibli souvenir — all neatly presented and often exclusive to this location. 

For travellers passing through, it’s a perfect detour: just a few steps from the Yaesu Underground Central Gate, with bright lights, cartoon music and every shade of kawaii you could imagine.

Pokémon Store Tokyo Station

At the far end of Character Street is one of the busiest and most photographed stores in the complex: the Pokémon Store Tokyo Station. It’s smaller than a full Pokémon Center, but designed perfectly for travellers on the move. The shelves are lined with plush toys, keychains, card packs and T-shirts, but the main draw is the exclusive merchandise — most famously the Stationmaster Pikachu, dressed in a navy train-officer’s uniform complete with cap and Tokyo Station badge. 

You can also find themed snacks, shopping bags, and collectible medals printed on-site. Because the store is inside the station complex, it’s a convenient stop for last-minute gifts or a quick photo by the giant Pikachu statue. The shop opens from around 10 AM to 8:30 PM, and like most of Character Street, it’s compact, efficient and full of colour.

Food

If you wander further through the underground maze, the retail focus shifts from characters to food. Gransta Tokyo, stretching beneath the central concourse, offers an elegant mix of patisseries, cafés, bakeries and boutiques. 

Upstairs, the Daimaru department store on the Yaesu side adds another level of polished shopping, with its gourmet food hall famous for perfectly packaged sweets and bentō. And if you head down another corridor, you’ll stumble onto Tokyo Ramen Street — eight ramen shops side by side, each with its own loyal following. The queues are short but steady, and every bowl is a reflection of Tokyo’s endless appetite for variety. 

A little further along is Kitchen Street, where you can find everything from sushi and yakitori to fluffy pancakes and parfaits. You can eat light, eat fancy, or just grab a beer and people-watch as commuters rush past.

Travellers who prefer to dine on the train aren’t left out either. Tokyo Station is legendary for its ekiben — the travel lunchboxes sold in neat stalls throughout the concourses. These are not ordinary snacks but beautifully arranged meals in lacquered boxes: grilled salmon over rice, Wagyu beef with vegetables, pickled daikon and tamagoyaki. 

Many of the bentō are regional, showcasing flavours from around Japan, and they’re packed to be eaten neatly on your lap as the Shinkansen slides past Mount Fuji. It’s one of those quietly perfect Japanese experiences — efficient, delicious and just a bit poetic.

A world on its own

Everything about Tokyo Station feels designed to balance movement with pause. You can step off a bullet train, browse an anime shop, grab a latte under restored brick vaults, pick up a souvenir box of cookies, and still make your connection without ever going outside. 

On one side, the Marunouchi façade opens onto the formal heart of the city, its symmetry and red brick standing in elegant contrast to the glass towers around it. On the other, the Yaesu exit buzzes with buses, offices and neon reflections. Between them lies an entire ecosystem — a working monument where history and everyday life fit seamlessly together.

For most travellers, Tokyo Station is a place you pass through. But for anyone who lingers a little, it becomes something else: a snapshot of Japan in miniature — precise, layered, endlessly interesting, and somehow still welcoming no matter how fast it moves.

2025 Journey Across Japan

1. Japan’s Superconducting Maglev train breaks world speed record at 603 km/h.
2. Japan’s maglev bullet train delayed to 2035 or later as costs rise to ¥11 trillion.
3. QUESTION | Should you be stressed about travelling to Japan, and fear of missing out?.
4. Brussels Airport to Milan Malpensa with Brussels Airlines, operated by Air Baltic, ft. the 2025 check-in and boarding software hack.
5. REVIEW | Sala Montale Exclusive Lounge and Sala Gae Aulentin Premium Lounge at Milan Malpensa Airport, extra Schengen.
6. REVIEW | All Nippon Airways (ANA), Business Class, Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner to Tokyo.
7. REVIEW | Toei Animation Museum in Nerima, Tokyo.