Tokyo
Where Japan's first railway departed. The bars now fill the arches and the alleys, and SL Plaza is where television goes to interview drunk office workers
Shimbashi is where Japan's first railway left for Yokohama in 1872 — though that Shimbashi Station was not this one, but a building three hundred metres east, in Shiodome. Today's station inherited the name in 1914 from Karasumori Station, opened in 1909. The plaza with its steam locomotive, the izakaya fitted one per brick arch under the elevated tracks, and Karasumori Shrine still holding its ground between office blocks tell you what kind of place this is. Leave by the west exit and you are in the drinking alleys; leave by the east and you are among the towers of Shiodome.
The Classics
The square directly outside the west exit, built around a preserved steam locomotive, C11 292, installed in 1972 to mark a century of railways in Japan. It is the backdrop for the street interviews Japanese television keeps filming here, and the default place to meet someone in Shimbashi.
💡 The locomotive was built in 1945 and spent its whole working life at the Himeji depot. It never ran in Tokyo.
The site of the first Shimbashi Station, where Japan's first railway left for Yokohama in 1872. After the freight yard that replaced it closed in 1986, excavation uncovered the original foundations, and in 2003 the station building was rebuilt on the same spot with its opening-day exterior. Inside is a free exhibition room, with the excavated platform remains on view.
💡 Free admission, 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays. This, not today's Shimbashi Station, is where Japan's first station stood.
A shogunal garden from the Edo period, built around a tidal pond fed by seawater from Tokyo Bay — the water level still rises and falls with the tide. The view of pines and water with the Shiodome towers rising behind them exists nowhere else.
💡 About a 15-minute walk from Shimbashi Station. Open 9:00–17:00; there is an admission charge. The teahouse in the garden serves matcha.
Local Secrets
Down an alley stacked with izakaya signs, on a cramped plot hemmed in by buildings on all four sides. Shrine tradition holds that Fujiwara no Hidesato founded it in 940 in thanks for victory over Taira no Masakado's revolt, on a spot where crows had gathered in a wood — karasu-mori, the crow wood, which is where the district's name comes from. The torii is a squared concrete post, and the hall is a Showa-era building.
💡 The entrance to the approach is narrow and easy to miss among the restaurant signs. The shrine is known for its colourful goshuin seals, and there is often a queue for them at weekends.
Finished in 1971, with a facade like stacked lattice work and shops filling four floors above ground plus a basement. The basement holds around seventy restaurants and bars; the upper floors run to discount ticket shops, massage places and old-style coffee houses. The building is part of a redevelopment plan for the station's west side, and no one knows how much longer it stands as it is.
💡 Even walking straight through the ground-floor passage changes the air around you. Most tenants trade with office workers, so a good number close on Sundays and holidays.
A free observation space on the 46th floor of Caretta Shiodome. Below you are the greenery of Hama-rikyu and Tokyo Bay, with the bayside towers beyond. Unlike the paid observatories it stays uncrowded, and you can sit down and look.
💡 Free, and open until 23:30 — useful on a wet day, or when you have time to fill before dinner.
The Classics
A small yoshoku counter on the ground floor of the New Shimbashi Building, working mainly in omurice and Napolitan spaghetti. At lunchtime the queue is all office workers.
💡 Closed Sundays; Saturdays until 15:30. After 14:00 is the easiest time to get in.
A basement izakaya with a good name for its sashimi platters, made from whatever came in that day, at prices that stay reasonable. It is below ground but the entrance is open and easy to walk into.
💡 On Fridays it runs until 4:30 in the morning; other days it closes at 23:30.
An izakaya built around sashimi, grilled fish and simmered fish, with set lunches in the same vein during the day. Around 20:00 on a weekday it tends to be full.
💡 The name includes the word for free-range chicken, but sashimi is what the place is actually known for. Closed weekends and holidays. Shimbashi runs on office workers, so if you are eating here at a weekend, check what is open before you come.
Local Secrets
West of the station, in the lanes around Karasumori Shrine, signs for yakitori, oden and small bars stack up the sides of the buildings from the first floor to the fourth, while the alley itself is barely wide enough for two people to pass. By early evening every place has put a board out front and the line between street and shop stops being clear.
💡 You cannot see inside the upstairs places from the street, so check the prices on the board at the entrance before you climb. Many have counters and take single customers without fuss.
The original branch of a seafood izakaya chain that started here in Shimbashi, known for cheap, generous sashimi and seafood. Within about five minutes' walk of the main shop are its No. 2, No. 4 and newest branches, plus a sister Italian restaurant — several outposts of the same operation clustered together. All of them fill up by early evening.
💡 If the main shop is full, another branch nearby often has space. Doors open at 15:00 (hours can differ on weekends and holidays).
On 14 October 1872, Japan's first railway opened between Shimbashi and Yokohama. The Shimbashi Station that first train left from, however, is not the Shimbashi Station of today. It stood about three hundred metres east, in Shiodome. On 20 December 1914, when Tokyo Station opened, it stopped handling passengers, was renamed Shiodome and became a freight yard. Japan's first station spent forty-two years letting people off, and then stopped.
The name it gave up went to the station next door: Karasumori, opened on 16 December 1909. Karasumori was a place name. Shrine tradition holds that in 940, Fujiwara no Hidesato set out to build a shrine in thanks for victory over Taira no Masakado's revolt, and found, as a dream had told him he would, a wood where crows had gathered — karasu-mori. So today's Shimbashi Station began as the station of the crow wood. The name moved three hundred metres from east to west; the older name stayed with the shrine and the lanes around it. Everyone drinking on the west side of the station tonight is drinking inside a former station name.
The Shiodome freight yard closed on 1 November 1986. Digging for the redevelopment that followed turned up the foundations of the first Shimbashi Station under the soil, and in 2003 the station building was put back on the same spot, wearing the face it had on its opening day. Meanwhile, in front of the station that had taken its name, a steam locomotive was set down in 1972 to mark a century of railways in Japan: C11 292, built in 1945, which spent its whole working life at the Himeji depot and never once ran through Tokyo. Around a locomotive that never came here, standing in front of a station that is no longer the first, people are still meeting each other today.
Karasumori Shrine
The shrine's annual rite. The full festival alternates every other year with Hibiya Shrine, and in those years the portable shrines are carried through the streets. Lanterns line the narrow approach between the buildings, and lanes people normally just pass through fill up and stay full.
SL Plaza and around
A summer festival run by the local shopping associations. The name comes from an invitation to stay ko-ichi-jikan — 'a short hour' — and a tower goes up on SL Plaza for bon dancing and a yukata contest. Food stalls fill the square, and people join the circle straight from work.
Dates shift from year to year. Check the shrine or organiser before you plan around one.
The brick arches carrying the Tokaido and other lines each hold a single izakaya. Every train that passes sets the ceiling rumbling. After dark the beer-crate stools come out into the walkway and there stops being an inside and an outside.
Many places open from around 17:00, and early on you can sit down without queueing.
Alleys that in daylight are just a mass of signage light up vertically once it gets dark. Smoke from the yakitori place on the ground floor, the windows of the bars on the second and third, strings of bulbs stacked above that — all layered over a lane about two metres wide.
The shrine approach is part of the same warren; look past the red lanterns and there is the torii.
Under the Shimbashi Ekimae Building and the New Shimbashi Building, small businesses still fill the floor plans laid out when the buildings went up. The corridors are bright with fluorescent light, and an izakaya sits next to a barber or a discount ticket shop. It is a different kind of night from the alleys above.
The basements connect to the station, so you can move around without getting wet when it rains.
A hotel of the type that puts a washer-dryer and a microwave in the room. Six minutes' walk from Shimbashi Station, on the quieter side away from the drinking alleys.
💡 The in-room laundry makes it a sensible base for a longer Tokyo stay when you would rather not add to your luggage.
Rates vary by season — check a booking site
A business hotel on the Hibiya side of the station, within walking distance of both the drinking alleys and Ginza, and in reach of Haneda and Narita without a transfer.
💡 Rooms are not large, but the price is modest for the location — useful when you have an early start.
Rates vary by season — check a booking site
A hotel occupying the upper floors of a Shiodome tower. The rooms run from the 28th to the 37th floor, looking down on Hama-rikyu and Tokyo Bay on one side or towards Tokyo Tower on the other. It sits on the opposite side of the station from the drinking alleys at the Karasumori exit — the two halves of one station could hardly be less alike.
💡 It connects to the Shiodome exit of Shimbashi Station by underground passage and pedestrian deck. If the view is the point, confirm which way the room faces when you book.
Upper-end rates that vary by season — check a booking site
From Shibuya
14 min · direct · Tokyo Metro Ginza Line · ¥180
From Shinjuku
21 min · 1 transfer (change at Akasaka-mitsuke) · Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line → Tokyo Metro Ginza Line · ¥210At Akasaka-mitsuke the change is across the same platform. If you would rather not change at all, the JR Yamanote Line runs direct in about 29 minutes for ¥260.
From Tokyo Station
4 min · direct · JR Yamanote Line · ¥160The Tokaido and Yokosuka lines do it in two or three minutes. Either way it is one stop.
From Ueno
11 min · direct · JR Yamanote Line · ¥200
From Ikebukuro
28 min · direct · JR Yamanote Line · ¥260
From Shinagawa
9 min · direct · JR Yamanote Line · ¥200The Tokaido and Yokosuka lines take four or five minutes. Whichever train you take, there is no change.
From Narita Airport
79 min · 1 transfer (change at Oshiage) · Keisei Narita Sky Access Line (Access Express) → Keisei Oshiage Line / Toei Asakusa Line · ¥1,420The Skyliner with a change at Aoto is about 75 minutes but ¥2,470. In the other direction, some Keisei Main Line rapid limited expresses run through onto the Toei Asakusa Line and reach Shimbashi with no change at all — about 98 minutes, and ¥1,220, the cheapest of the three.
From Haneda Airport
40 min · direct · Keikyu Airport Line / Toei Asakusa Line (direct) · ¥550Take a train that runs through onto the Toei Asakusa Line and there is no change at all. The monorail with a change at Hamamatsucho takes about the same 41 minutes, but the through train is cheaper and involves fewer stairs.
Times are for a typical daytime weekday and fares are ordinary tickets, rounded. Both change — check a route planner on the day.
Shimbashi is served by the JR Yamanote, Keihin-Tohoku, Tokaido and Yokosuka lines, the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, the Toei Asakusa Line and the Yurikamome. The Yurikamome starts here: this is the station for Odaiba and Toyosu. The Toei Asakusa Line has through trains to both Haneda and Narita, making this one of the few stations with a no-change ride to either airport. There are two sides to the station: the Hibiya (Karasumori) exit to the west for the SL Plaza and the drinking alleys, and the Shiodome exit to the east for the high-rises and Caretta Shiodome.
Weekday evenings are when Shimbashi is most itself. From about 18:00 the arches and the alleys fill up and drinkers spill onto the pavement. Weekends and public holidays are the reverse: the places that live off office workers close, and the whole district goes quiet — easy walking, and easy photography. SL Plaza has people in it all day; it is where everyone waits for everyone. For two days in late July the plaza and the surrounding streets are given over to the Koichi festival crowds.
Most of the bars here trade with office workers, so many are shut on Sundays and public holidays; if you are coming at a weekend, check what is open first. Places under the tracks and up the alleys have narrow frontages and you often cannot see inside, so read the prices posted at the entrance before you go in. On a wet day, the basement arcades of the station-front buildings and the free observation floor on the 46th floor of Caretta Shiodome are both good places to wait it out.
The name means new bridge. It was given to a bridge thrown over the Shiodome River early in the Edo period. When the Shibaguchi Gate was set to its north in 1710 the bridge was renamed Shibaguchi-bashi, but people went on calling the northern end Shinbashi, and in the Meiji era the bridge took the name back. In 1872 the terminus of Japan's first railway was placed here.