Tokyo

Not a city, but a metropolis. Do you want to see a real metropolis? Go to Tokyo!

Tokyo means ‘Eastern Capital’ in Japanese, but has been officially known as ‘Tokyo Metropolis’ or ‘Tokyo-to’ in Japanese since 1943, although it was originally known as Edo, a small fishing community, being renamed as ‘Tokyo’ in 1868.
Tokyo is the capital of Japan, located on Honshu, in the south-eastern part the largest and main island of Japan, and has been the home of the Japanese emperor, his family and his Imperial Palace since the 1800s.
In 2011, Tokyo had a population of over 13.1 million residents in the metropolis with the 23 special wards or ‘cities’ containing 9 million of the total population.
In 2008, Tokyo had a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$1,479 trillion, making it the wealthiest city in the world.
Tokyo was the host of the 1964 Summer Olympic Games, and will be hosting the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, while sumo, judo, karate, baseball and tennis are among the popular sports in the metropolis.

Tokyo was the victim of a major earthquake, the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, and the bombing of Tokyo in World War II (1944-45) destroying half the city, with 140,000 and 75,000 to 200,000 fatalities respectively.
In 2011, Tokyo’s Skytree became the second tallest structure and the tallest tower in the world, and the city has numerous high rise buildings and apartments to cater for the densely populated area.
Tokyo is said to be the cleanest city in the world, and the metropolis covers an area of 2,187 square kilometres (844 square miles) and contains 26 cities, 8 villages and 23 wards.
Tokyo has a comprehensive train and subway system which is the major form of public transport there, with monorails and buses being second.
Tokyo is an urban heat island, explaining increases of temperature over the years, which the government is helping to reduce by planting thousands of trees during its ten year project which will be complete in 2016.

Amazon: