Ameyoko Market

This market has two names and they both mean something different. Ameyoko is short for Ameya Yokocho — Candy Store Alley — because sweets were traditionally sold here. But it is also read as America Yokocho — America Alley — because after the Second World War, the market was flooded with goods obtained from US occupation soldiers. Both meanings are equally valid and equally true. The name is a perfect linguistic accident.

Ameyoko was born as an illegal black market in the rubble of postwar Ueno. Yakuza organisations controlled commercial activities, and vendors sold whatever they could get their hands on — much of it American military surplus. Chocolate, cigarettes, clothing, canned goods, all filtering out of the occupation forces and into Japanese hands through unofficial channels. In nineteen forty-six, authorities built a structure to house the existing businesses, effectively legalising the black market and transforming it into a legitimate shopping street.

Today, over four hundred shops are crammed under and around the elevated JR Yamanote Line tracks between Ueno and Okachimachi stations. Vendors shout prices, tuna gets sliced in the open air, and the energy is closer to a Southeast Asian bazaar than anything you would expect in orderly Tokyo. The market feels like it runs on a different operating system from the rest of the city.

The peak chaos arrives on December thirty-first, when Tokyoites descend on Ameyoko en masse to buy ingredients for New Year's cooking. The crowds are extraordinary — shoulder-to-shoulder through narrow lanes, vendors auctioning off seafood at escalating volume, an entire city trying to squeeze through four hundred metres of market. If you want to see Tokyo at its least composed, come on the last day of the year.