Shibuya

The crossing is just the cover page

Everyone does the Scramble, and you should too, once. But Shibuya's actual personality lives in the smaller streets: Nonbei Yokocho's two-storey bars pressed against the train tracks, the climb up to the rooftop views, the walk down towards Daikanyama as the noise fades behind you.

Shibuya is the Tokyo of every establishing shot, and the crossing really is worth seeing twice: once from inside the scramble, once from above. But the neighbourhood's actual best self lives in its creases. Nonbei Yokocho, a double alley of two-storey bars by the tracks, survived every redevelopment around it. Chatei Hatou pours some of the city's most serious siphon coffee behind an unremarkable door. The backstreets toward Tomigaya hide the restaurants locals actually book.

The area has been a construction site for a decade and the new layer (Shibuya Sky, Miyashita Park's rooftop, the Stream complex) is finally complete, which means Shibuya now does both: peak neon-city spectacle and, one street back, small and analogue and old.