The route from the Sky Tree to Gōtoku-ji in Setagaya took me past Tokyo Station, which was reason enough for a short stop. The building is genuinely worth a look in its own right, and I also needed to exchange my voucher for the JR Pass — because the next day, an actual excursion was on the cards.

Tokyo Station

I had already passed through briefly the evening before on the way back from Odaiba and grabbed a few photos, but today I wanted to give the building the attention it deserved. Tokyo Station is a study in architectural contrast — two very different faces depending on which side you approach from.

On the east side, the GranRoof: a sweeping steel and glass structure completed in 2013 and designed by Helmut Jahn. Undeniably impressive, though by this point in the trip I had seen enough glass and steel to last a while — Marunouchi alone has them in abundance.

The west side is another matter entirely. The Marunouchi building, designed by Tatsuno Kingo and completed in 1913, is a beautiful red brick neo-Renaissance construction that holds its own against the surrounding skyscrapers with considerable quiet dignity — quite a feat when your neighbours are that tall and that glass-fronted.

The station itself is, predictably, enormous — one of Japan’s most important rail hubs and the beating heart of the Shinkansen network. I got thoroughly lost, by a conservative estimate, about a hundred times. I chose to regard this as useful preparation for the travel day ahead rather than a personal failing.

The JR Pass

Enthusiasm aside, I hadn’t forgotten why I was there: the voucher exchange. The central JR customer centre is the place to go, and the process was refreshingly efficient — voucher surrendered, passport checked, and in return: a small paper ticket with a magnetic strip, plus two additional tickets for seat reservations on the Shinkansen to and from Sendai. Paper tickets. Physical, losable, crease-able paper tickets — because in this fully electronically digitized country, where every toilet is talking to you, all of these tickets are only available in physical form. I treated that card with a devotion that would have impressed Gollum.

As it turned out, the seat reservations weren’t strictly necessary, but the prospect of standing for two hours on a Shinkansen felt like an unnecessary gamble. And they’re free, so.

I then turned to the vending machines, keen to lock in reservations for the rest of my rail journeys while I had the chance. On the Tokyo–Osaka route in particular, the risk of selling out was real — and indeed, when I pulled up availability, seats were already running low. Good instinct. I did manage to muddle something up on the Kanazawa leg, which would come back to bite me later, but overall the machines handled the process well. You press the button for JR Pass holders and the terminal walks you through everything, step by step, in English. The one irritation: you can only book one reservation at a time, which means re-entering your passport number and re-scanning the pass for each journey individually. By the time I was done, I knew my passport number by heart.

Marunouchi

Before heading on to Setagaya, I wandered for a while — out through the station’s main square and into the surrounding streets. The towering skyscrapers of Marunouchi left me cold, though; all that glass and corporate ambition is impressive in an abstract sense but not especially inviting. Time was short anyway, so I settled for a few photos and made a mental note to perhaps visit the gardens of the Imperial Palace on another day.

Pictures – click on the photo for more information:

To the previous destination – Back to the overview – To the next destination