The takeaway

Shibuya Scramble is exactly what it sounds like – every light goes red at once and people pour across in every direction, diagonals included. Estimates run to somewhere around 2,500 to 3,000 people in a single change at peak, and well north of half a million a day. But the number is not what makes it magic. What makes it magic is that nobody bumps into anybody. Several thousand people read each other’s trajectories, adjust by a few centimetres, and the whole thing resolves in about forty-five seconds. Then it does it again. I have stood and watched it for half an hour and been completely happy.

Here is the one thing worth knowing: it only reads from above. Everyone’s instinct is to film from inside the crossing, which gets you a lovely video of the backs of strangers. Get up high and the whole choreography appears.

Three places to watch from. The Starbucks in Tsutaya on the corner is the famous one – second floor, glass wall, buy a coffee and wait your turn for a window seat. Shibuya Sky, the open-air roof on the forty-seventh floor of Scramble Square, is spectacular for the whole city but sits too high to read the crossing itself. And my favourite, which most people walk straight past: Mag’s Park on the roof of Magnet by 109 – directly above the junction, low enough to see faces, a small fee, and a fraction of the queue.

When to go. Early evening from about six, when the screens are lit and the commuters are out – that is the version in your head. And rain is a gift here, not a setback: umbrellas from above are the shot. Then, for the complete opposite, come back at six in the morning, when the same junction is nearly empty and one street cleaner is working his way around it. Doing both is the whole experience.

While you are there. The Hachiko statue on the station side – the dog who came to meet his owner every day for nine years after the man had died, and is now where all of Tokyo says they will meet. Nonbei Yokocho, two lanes of tiny post-war bars tucked up against the railway, ninety seconds away and about sixty years back. And Center Gai if you want the full volume.

Then walk fifteen minutes to Nakameguro or into Yoyogi Park and feel the noise drop away. That contrast, more than the crossing itself, is the thing I hope you notice.