Tokyo started off as an insignificant little fishing village called Edo, lying in the Kanto plain, close to the mouth of the Sumida-gawa River. The location was an enviable one; the plain was a fertile and rich area, and between the 1300s and the 1700s, the village of Edo came to be occupied by various rulers. In 1457, the ruler Dokan Ota built the first castle on the site (the date is still considered the official 'founding’ of Tokyo), but it was during the reign of the powerful Shogun, Ieyasu of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600, that Tokyo actually became a power centre. By the end of that century, Tokyo had begun to grow- dominated by Ieyasu’s castle, but developing laterally too, with workshops, streets, bathhouses, theatres, even brothels, coming up.

In 1867, with the Meiji Restoration, Tokyo received its present name, and continued to develop - now not as one city, but as a conglomerate of many cities, each a commercial, administrative and social centre in its own right.

Tokyo suffered badly in the bombings of the Second World War but once it started to recover, it again took the shape of a loose-knit union of separate villages and towns. Very big, very diverse, and a wee bit frightening for a stranger.