Hamarikyu-mae Railway Crossing

Ginza is one of Tokyo's most popular and oldest shopping districts, full of high-end brand-name stores, luxury fine-dining restaurants and glitzy cocktail bars. It's also home to many retro coffeehouses and little-visited sites of feudal and pre-WWII Japanese history, for those who like to harken back to eras long past.

On the outskirts of such a district stands its last surviving railway-crossing post, an otherwise typical sight in the Tokyo metropolis. The solitary black-and-yellow post stands on the side of the street like a traffic light, but without a railroad track in sight. It's a leftover from a branch of the still-running Tōkaidō Freight Line, colloquially referred to as the Tokyo-Shijō Line, which was in operation from 1935 to 1986.

The freight line connected Shiodome, now one of Tokyo's main business districts, with the world-famous wholesale market of Tsukiji, carrying a cargo of fresh fish and vegetables that would be distributed across the country. Over time, however, the Tokyo-Shijō station grew outdated and went defunct, causing this segment of the Tōkaidō Freight Line to be replaced by an asphalt road.

The railway crossing signal, which stands near the Hamarikyū Gardens, was also to be demolished until the plan was met with resistance from the locals. Now it's a modest monument to Tokyo's mercantile history, the only one that's left in the district of Ginza.