When in Tokyo, don't miss the Ginza -- the classic district with the greatest concentration of bars in the world, many of which are truly unique and surprising.
What's so different, you ask? How about stepping into an ordinary ten floor building and finding there is bar (or two or three or four, etc.) on each and every floor?
Ginza is in the heart of Tokyo, and it's one of the most famous bar areas in the world. Its name refers to an old coin mint that used to be there, and to the official organization of goldsmiths ("gin" stands for Gold, and "za" for union).
Today there are some 2000 bars in Ginza. That's an astounding figure, when you realize that the entire Ginza district runs about 1000 meters from south to north and 500 meters from east to west -- not more than eight blocks!
But what blocks! Each block is home to dozens of buildings, and each building houses several small bars -- usually more than ten per building. Most of the bars in Ginza are quite small, with about twenty to twenty-five seats or less.
What's amazing is that for the most part we're talking about very classic bars serving excellent cocktails, considering with a great range of local and international products. When you consider the small size of the bars you get a sense of the pride and dedication involved.
There are other areas in Tokyo area that share Ginza's style: Roppongi, Shinjyuku, Shibuya and Ikebukuro are have similarities. But the Ginza scene is the biggest.
One reason bars are so omnipresent in Japan is that the Japanese people often use bar meetings in a business context. So there are many bars spread around the big cities such as Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka and Sendai where large companies have their offices.
The reason Ginza has so many bars in a small area is because the value of land is so high. Land in the district's center is worth as over twenty million yen (more than 200,000 US dollars) per square meter! It's near the most expensive real estate in Japan, and among the highest per-meter prices in the world.
Ginza's roots are in the Edo period, which lasted from 1603 to 1868. If you went back to the Taisho period (1912-1926) the Ginza would start to be recognizable. But it was only after World War II that that the bar business slowly transformed to what we see today.
Today there are a lot of countries that prohibit smoking in bars. The Ginza has one-upped them: since 2004, you can't even smoke outside the bar. Nor can you walk and smoke. If you walk, smoke and throw a butt on the ground you can get fined. There are, however, privately owned areas where lighting up is still allowed. And one can smoke in uncrowded areas if the site is equipped with smoking stands.
With all the Ginza excitement comes a certain degree of instability. The Ginza is such a hot area that many bar owners have to fight just to stay in the game. As Mr. Ueno Hidetsugu told us, for bar owners, even when times are good, you have to be careful because the rug might get pulled out. “Right now there is a bit of an economic bubble in the Ginza area. The trend is to tear down old and small buildings to make one big building. This is not a good tendency at all." Why not? According to Mr. Hidetsugu, a well-known Ginza bartender, it's because if you're a bar owner it means your rent is going to go up -- a lot! Sometimes the new rents are 50% higher than the old ones! "It's impossible to pay," Mr. Hidetsugu says. And it's not likely that displaced bar owners are going to be able to find a new space in Ginza for the same rent. The new buildings going up and the new spaces being created come with a high price tag, to put it mildly. "Only big companies can rent those” says Mr. Hidetsugu.
Will Ginza survive this rocket ride, this drive for flashier places that cost more and more, or will it come crashing to the ground? Well this is Tokyo, after all, so no doubt it will survive, and transform itself. It's the genius of the city, and perhaps Ginza in particular, to bring great things to life -- like classic bars stacked ten stories high -- only to tear them down and start again. Perhaps that's one reason why nearly everyone who goes to the Ginza is touched by the desire to enjoy the moment and live it up while you can.
