Ginza is Tokyo at its most composed — the luxury shopping quarter where Chuo-dori's flagship stores (Hermes, Chanel, Uniqlo's twelve-story flagship) line a boulevard that is pedestrianized on weekends, and the side streets hold the city's most serious cocktail bars and sushi counters. The drinking culture here is distinct from Shinjuku's or Shibuya's: quieter, more formal, built on the premise that a cocktail is a craft object deserving the same attention as a piece of Ginza silverwork. Bar High Five, Star Bar, and their neighbors operate behind discreet entrances in the way that Ginza has always operated — with an elegance that announces itself through understatement rather than signage.
Below ground, the depachika food halls of Mitsukoshi and Matsuya contain the most concentrated displays of Japanese food culture in the city. East of the main avenue, Tsukiji Outer Market provides the morning counterpoint to Ginza's evening polish. Under the JR tracks at Yurakucho, the yakitori stalls and whisky bars offer a deliberate roughness that Ginza proper would never permit, and this juxtaposition — crystal-cut ice above the tracks, charcoal smoke below — is one of Tokyo's most characteristic pleasures.