Tokyo's zero milestone is set into the deck of this bridge. It is a two-arch stone span completed in 1911 and designated an Important Cultural Property; set into the middle of the deck is a bronze plate, the Nihonkoku Doro Genpyo, the point from which road distances across Japan are still measured. It was fixed as the starting point of the five great highways back in 1604. Less a sight, then, than a coordinate.
What makes it worth stopping for is the thing most people come to complain about: the elevated expressway directly overhead. It has covered the bridge for more than seventy years and is now being moved underground — the new route is due in fiscal 2035, the elevated structure to come down by fiscal 2040. A Nihonbashi with a ceiling over it is something only this generation gets to see.
Half a day, spent well: a department store stands at either end. Mitsukoshi began in 1673 as Echigoya, a kimono dealer, and became Japan's first department store in 1904; the Takashimaya building of 1933 was the first department store architecture in the country to be named an Important Cultural Property — go in for the hall rather than the shop windows. Then take one of the boats that leave near the bridge and look up at that expressway from the water; it reads differently from below. Mitsukoshimae and Nihombashi are the nearest stations.