AKASAKA

Akasaka - Akasaka Tokyo Japan - Akasaka Guide including sight seeing, Akasaka restaurants and Akasaka Hotels (Save up to 70% on Akasaka Hotels Reservation).

Akasaka (赤坂) is one of Tokyo's central business districts, full of corporate headquarters and exclusive hotels. The area is directly adjacent to Nagatacho, one of Tokyo's prime concentrations of bureaucracy, and only a stone's throw from the Imperial Palace in Chiyoda. Akasaka also contains several embassies including United States of America, Canada and Spain.

Akasaka Hotels

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Getting to Akasaka

Akasaka-Mitsuke station on the Metro Ginza and Marunouchi subway lines is at the edge of Akasaka. The station is connected by a handy, if rather long, tunnel to Nagatacho station on the Namboku, Hanzomon and Yurakucho lines. Tameike-Sanno (Namboku/Ginza) is also in the area and a good access point for Itsunoki-dori.

Entrance to Akasaka-Mitsuke Station by Araisyohei

Akasaka Sights

Probably the only actual sight in Akasaka is the Hie Shrine (日枝神社), located atop a little hill at the edge of the area. Reached by a steep flight of stairs under a veritable tunnel of orange torii, the shrine grounds are an oasis of tranquillity in the middle of Tokyo and, in good weather, a popular place for a lunchtime picnic.

Once a year, the shrine holds the rather modest Sanno Matsuri (山王祭) festival, featuring the usual panoply of music, dancing, yatai stalls and sake.

Akasaka Palace

Akasaka Palace or State Guest-House (Geihinkan; 迎賓館) is a facility in which the government of Japan accommodates visiting state dignitaries. The guest house took on its present function in 1974, having previously been a detached palace.

Eat & Drink in Akasaka

At night corporate Akasaka loosens its tie and comes to life: the blocks bounded by Sotobori-dori (外堀通り) and Itsunoki-dori (一ッ木通り) are packed full of expensive restaurants and nightclubs, second only to the Ginza in swankiness. Both Japanese and international cuisine are very well represented, with places like Tenichi for tempura and Shabuzen for shabu-shabu, and others representing Indonesian, French, Mexican, Russian, Indian, Italian cuisines... you name it, you'll probably find it.

Dinners cater mostly to the expense account set and are correspondingly expensive (¥10000 and up is not uncommon). The best deals in Akasaka are thus at lunch, since no matter how high their prices go in the evening, all these restaurants offer excellent lunch menus for ¥1000 or so.

(Article based on Wikitravel article by Wikitravel users Jpatokal. Article used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.)