Nihombashi
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
We're setting up our "headquarters" in the Tokyo district of Nihombashi. I've decided I like the area.
It's a no-nonsense neighbourhood full of business buildings and with few attractions of any sort. The one famous site for which the place is named (the bridge literally called "Japan bridge") still stands with its bronze dragons and other interesting features, but it's now underneath a highway overpass that runs the length of the river.
And yet I like the place. It's a real business centre, and has a vibrancy that can only come with the ebb and flow of people going about their working lives. Much like the tsukiji fish market or some of the market neighbourhoods (Ueno, Okachimachi). By comparison, some of the "recreation" neighbourhoods—like Hiroo, Daikonyama, and Ginza—seem quite uninteresting.
I'd go as far as to say that it's these purposeful places that are the 'real Tokyo', the home of the vast numbers of working salarymen who make up the backbone of the city. Nihombashi has the stock exchange and feels connected with the financial centre in Marunouchi/Otemachi, but with its countless cheap eateries and huddled curb-side smokers, Nihombashi avoids the dreariness and snobbery of those more bloodless and international environments. Nihombashi also has the density and function-over-form style of the huge stretch of highly populated east-central Tokyo that stretches along the Sumida river. While it doesn't have the cheap nomikai/booze-up places found in Shimbashi to the south, Nihombashi and Shimbashi share a purposeful vibe, similar architecture, and their joint proximity to the inner city and the Port of Tokyo.
It's impossible to say that Tokyo has a downtown, but it certainly seems to have a business centre in Nihombashi.