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Aoyama 青山Aoyama
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山
  • Aoyama 青山

The inspiration people seek: When people talk about Aoyama, it’s usually with the image of “the most stylish district in Japan.” It’s an area lined with apparel shops, large and small, famous and unknown, and is said to have the most beauty parlors and hair salons of any place in Tokyo. Like its neighboring districts of Omote-sando, Harajuku, Ura-harajuku and Shibuya, it’s talked about as a fashion town. But what makes Aoyama different is perhaps the impact the fashion shops based there made in giving birth to new eras of Japanese fashion. Read more

In short: Aoyama is the name people use for the area along both sides of Route 246, from around the Aoyama 1-chome (pronounced iccho-meh in Japanese) intersection to the Kotto-dori intersection and the area to the south. But, its official name is Kita-Aoyama 1-chome through Kita-Aoyama 3-chome, and Minami-Aoyama 1-chome through Minami-Aoyama 7-chome. Read more

Some background: Regarding how the area got its name, it’s said that in the early Edo Period, the estate of the Aoyama family (feudal vassals) was established here and this area along the Oyama-kaido highroad (the precursor to today’s R246) came to be called Aoyama Juku (literally “Aoyama lodgings”) or Aoyama Hyakunin-cho (“Aoyama 100-person town”). Also, in the early Edo Period, a branch temple of the Zenkoji Temple of Shinshu (today’s Nagano Prefecture) was established here. The main temple is referenced in a haiku poem by the great poet Kobayashi Issa: Haru kaze ya / Ushi ni hikarete / Zenkoji (Spring wind / pulled by an ox / Zenkoji Temple). Because buildings have gone up between the branch temple and R246, few people notice it today. Read more

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