🇯🇵 Japan
Tokyo
Tokyo (東京 — "Eastern Capital" — renamed from Edo in 1868 when Emperor Meiji moved the imperial court from Kyoto) is the largest metropolitan area on earth (37 million people in Greater Tokyo, the largest urban agglomeration in human history) and simultaneously the city with the most Michelin stars (230+, more than Paris — the result of a perfectionist culture that applies the same discipline to a three-seat sushi counter as to a ryokan in the mountains), the most vending machines per capita (5 million — one for every 23 people), and arguably the cleanest subway system of any city on earth. Tokyo is a city of extreme contrasts that somehow coexist: Shinjuku (the busiest train station in the world — 3.64 million passengers per day, 200 exits) is 15 minutes from the Meiji Shrine (Meiji Jingū — the forested Shinto shrine in the middle of the city where you can watch a Shinto wedding on a weekend morning); the Tsukiji outer market (still the most exciting early-morning fish market in the world despite the inner market moving to Toyosu) is 30 minutes from Akihabara (the electronics and anime district where nine-story buildings sell only manga); and the Shibuya crossing (the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, 2,500 people crossing per light cycle) is next to Daikanyama (the most quietly stylish shopping street in Japan, where T-site is the most beautiful bookshop in the world). Tokyo's food culture requires a guidebook of its own: ramen, sushi (at a standing counter for ¥1,000 or at a 3-seat bar for ¥30,000), yakitori, tonkatsu, tempura and the extraordinary department store basement food halls (depachika).