Shibuya Crossing

In front of you is the Shibuya Crossing, the most photographed pedestrian crossing in the world. Wait until all the traffic lights for cars turn red and you will see why: for a few seconds, hundreds or even thousands of people cross at once in every direction, diagonally too, and hardly anyone bumps into anyone else.

1A valley with a station

The name Shibuya contains the character for ‘valley’, and not by chance: you are standing in a hollow, and the streets climb up all around you. In the early 20th century this was a crossroads on the edge of the city; the arrival of several railway lines and of the big department stores turned it into one of Tokyo's centres. This type of crossing, known as a scramble, was introduced here in the 1970s.

2A lost mural

Inside the station, in the passageway linking the Keiō Inokashira Line to the rest, hangs a 30-metre mural: ‘The Myth of Tomorrow’, by Okamoto Tarō. He painted it in the late 1960s for a hotel in Mexico City that was never finished, and the work vanished for decades. It was found in 2003 in a Mexican warehouse, restored in Japan, and has been here since 2008. It depicts the horror of a nuclear explosion.

From the mural passageway, the large windows offer one of the best free views of the crossing.

3What to look for

• The diagonals, the key feature of a scramble crossing.
• The giant screens on the buildings around the crossing.
• Okamoto Tarō's mural, if you go into the station.