Tokyo

Tokyo is the capital city of Japan. It sits on the eastern coast of the Japanese island of Honshu, on the edge of Tokyo Bay. About 14 million people live inside the city itself. The wider Tokyo metropolitan area holds nearly 37 million people, making it the largest urban area in the world. For comparison, that is more people than live in all of Canada.

Tokyo was not always called Tokyo. For hundreds of years, it was a small fishing village called Edo. A powerful warrior family, the Tokugawa shoguns, made Edo their base of power in 1603. Over the next 250 years, the village grew into one of the largest cities on Earth. Samurai warriors walked its streets, and strict rules kept foreigners out of the country. In 1868, the emperor moved his home to Edo and renamed it Tokyo, which means "eastern capital."

Tokyo has been knocked down and rebuilt twice in the last hundred years. A huge earthquake in 1923 killed more than 100,000 people and destroyed much of the city. Then American bombs during World War II flattened large parts of it again. Each time, the people of Tokyo rebuilt. Today the city is a mix of glass skyscrapers, narrow old streets, temples, and train stations.

Speaking of trains: Tokyo has the busiest train system in the world. Shinjuku Station alone handles more than 3 million passengers every day. During rush hour, station workers called "pushers" gently press people into crowded train cars so the doors can close. Japan's famous bullet trains, called shinkansen, leave Tokyo at speeds over 180 miles per hour.

The city is full of surprises. In one neighborhood, you can visit a 1,400-year-old Buddhist temple called Sensō-ji. A few subway stops away, a street in Akihabara glows with video-game shops and giant anime billboards. Tokyo is home to the Imperial Palace, where the emperor of Japan still lives, and to the world's most famous fish market, Toyosu, where tuna can sell for millions of dollars.

On a clear day, you can see Mount Fuji rising in the distance from the tops of Tokyo's skyscrapers. The volcano is about 60 miles away. Tokyo itself sits in an active earthquake zone, and small tremors happen often. Scientists know that a big earthquake will hit someday, but nobody can say when. The city keeps preparing, and keeps growing.