How long are you ashore in Tokyo?

Edo. By 1721 roughly a million people lived here — probably more than in any other city in the world. Almost none of what they built survives. What survives is the plan: the high ground, the low ground, and a bridge that is still the point from which every road in Japan is measured.

Sumo. Six tournaments a year, fifteen days each, and Tokyo hosts three of them. If your call falls inside one, you can watch the highest-ranked athletes in a fifteen-hundred-year-old sport for less than a theatre ticket. If it does not, the sport is still visible — you just have to know where.

Edomae. Nigiri sushi is roughly two hundred years old, was invented as fast food sold from a cart, and was originally built on fish that had been cured, marinated or cooked — because Edo had no ice. Most of what makes a great sushi counter great is still those techniques.

Senso-ji. Two fishermen pulled a small figure of Kannon out of the Sumida River in the year 628. It has been enshrined here ever since and has never once been shown to the public. Around that unseen object grew Tokyo's oldest temple and its loudest shopping street.