東京都 - Tokyo Metropolis

Japanese, like Chinese, has "Classifiers" for a lot of nouns:

  • flat things (like plates) are "mai" 枚
  • long skinny things (like chopsticks or pencils) are "hon/pon/bon (depending on the number of items)" 本

and so forth.

Tokyo-to

Japanese classifiers also exist for major cities:

  • smaller cities are known as "shi" 市
  • Osaka and Kyoto are "fu" 府
  • Hokkaido is known as "do" 道
  • Finally Tokyo is known as "to" 都

 

Tokyo-to

This shot of Shinjuku Kabukicho (新宿歌舞伎町)really amazes me because there's a weird quality to that makes it look almost "unreal" ... like I'm looking at a model of a city.

Only Tokyo has the classifier "都", which roughly translates to "Metropolis"... on a recent trip there, I was lucky enough to stay in some high-rise hotels ... and from high above, it's easy to see why it's called that....

 

Tokyo-to