Tokyo

Tokyo is a city that never truly sleeps, yet it has these strange, beautiful pockets of absolute stillness. One minute you’re standing in the middle of Shibuya Crossing, caught in a synchronized tide of thousands of people under giant 3D billboards, and the next, you’ve ducked into a side street where the only sound is the low hum of a vending machine.

If you want to feel the city’s pulse, start your morning at the Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa. The air is thick with the scent of “incense of healing” near the great bronze cauldron. I always find it fascinating to watch people fanning the smoke toward themselves for good luck before walking through the massive red lantern of the Kaminarimon Gate. Just a few steps away, Nakamise-dori is a sensory overload of its own—the sound of wooden shutters opening and the smell of freshly grilled age-manju (deep-fried flour cakes) is the best way to wake up.

But then, Tokyo flips the script. You take a train to Shinjuku, and suddenly you’re in the future. The views from the Shibuya Sky observation deck make the city look like a sprawling circuit board of lights. For something a bit more surreal, the digital waterfalls and floating flower gardens at teamLab Planets make you feel like you’ve stepped inside a dream.

The real secret to Tokyo, though, is found in the “Yokocho” (alleyways). Places like Omoide Yokocho—often called Memory Lane—are tiny, smoky corridors where salarymen and travelers sit shoulder-to-shoulder at counters that have barely changed since the 1950s. As you watch a chef grill skewers of yakitori over glowing coals, with the neon city towering just a few feet above the roof, you realize that Tokyo’s true magic isn’t in choosing between the old and the new. It’s the fact that they live perfectly, impossibly, right on top of each other.