Terrific Day in Tokyo

If you had a day to spend in Tokyo where would you spend it? Topping my list were three places: Ginza, Omotesando and The National Museum of Modern Art.

The Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art

Ginza, an upscale area of Tokyo with numerous department stores, boutiques, restaurants, and coffeehouses is recognized as one of the most luxurious shopping districts in the world. Many upscale fashion clothing flagship stores such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci are located there.

Neon Dusk @ GINZA

Omotesandō is known as one of the foremost 'architectural showcase' streets in the world, featuring a multitude of fashion flagship stores designed by internationally renowned architects within a short distance of each other. These include the Louis Vitton store (Jun Aoki, 2002) Prada building (Herzog & de Meuron, 2003), Tod's (Toyo Ito, 2004), Dior (SANAA, 2004), Omotesandō Hills (Tadao Ando, 2005) and Gyre (MVRDV, 2007), amongst others.

TOD's @ Omotesando

These two destinations are obviously for fashion enthusiasts and label conscious shoppers while others would still benefit just from viewing the latest designer collections and appreciating the ultra modern architecture of imposing flagship stores.

The Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art located at 3-1 Kitanomaru-koen, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, on the other hand, is the foremost museum that is collecting and exhibiting contemporary Japanese art today. Also known by the English acronym MOMAT (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) it was the first National Museum of Art in Japan dating back to 1952, when it was established as an institution governed by the Ministry of Education. Its collection of 20th century art includes those from Western-style and Nihonga artists. 

Architect of the MOMAT building was Kunio Maekawa. On two later occasions, neighboring premises were purchased and the Museum was further enlarged to include the Crafts Museum. The most recent re-design of MOMAT was conceived by Yoshiro Taniguchi (father of Yoshio Taniguchi who designed the extension of MOMA in New York).