Chiyoda

Almost everything this site covers in Chiyoda sits in one neighbourhood: Jimbocho. From the 1880s the law schools that became Meiji, Chuo and Nihon universities opened here one after another. Students arrived, expensive textbooks changed hands, and second-hand bookshops followed. It is now called the largest used-book quarter in the world — though counts vary wildly, from 130 shops to 180 to 400, because each survey draws its boundary differently.

Walk the street and you notice a rule. Most of the bookshops sit on the south side of Yasukuni-dori and face north. This keeps direct sunlight off the stock. There were shops on the north side once; over time they concentrated on the south. Visitors pass without registering it. To the booksellers it needs no explanation.

The student past shows in the food too. More than twenty curry houses — cheap, fast — earned the area a second name as the curry district, and kissaten where you can sit a long while after choosing a book survived alongside them. That is why four kissaten appear here for this ward alone. Some, like Sabouru and Sabouru 2 on the same lane, are near-identically named sibling shops that divide the work between them; walk in unaware and you will end up in the wrong one.