Tokyo Station Building Is A Historical Heritage Site And Also A Memorial of The Earthquake Disaster in 2011

These are photos of Marunouchi Area side of the Tokyo station taken last year after snow.
This part of the station building includes Tokyo Station Hotel which was established inside of the station from the beginning. The hotel started their business one year after the station opening in 1915. So the station building and the hotel have a hundred years of history.

The whole station building including the hotel was renovated recently. The roofs of the domes are covered by slates made of natural stones. They came from a northern part of Japan, and actually these slates experienced the terrible Higashi-Ni​hon earthquake disaster in 2011. At the time of the earthquake disaster, they were already finished and waiting in storage to be sent to Tokyo, and some part of them were damaged. The survived slates were used for the roofs of the station domes as planned, and some broken states were used for making a relief which is displayed inside of Tokyo Station.

The beautiful inside view shown in the lower left hand side photo is the original interior designed 100 years ago and just restored during the latest renovation. It is said that the chief designer Kingo Tatsuno tried to make a fusion design of Japanese style with Western style.

Please look at the lower center photo, the flying hawk relief (with Western style decoration​) is carrying an ear of rice (major agricultur​al product of Japan, and the staple food for Japanese people) , and the green plate on the lower wall has a design of one of the Chinese Zodiac Twelve Animals symbol because Japanese people used to use these animals as compass directions in old times. So each corner of this octagonal dome has green plate with an animal relief that represent the direction.

In addition, inside of Tokyo Station Hotel, there is a cafe run by a famous traditional Japanese sweets company "Tora-ya" as shown in the lower right hand side photo. They serve both traditional Japanese sweets and Japanese-Western fusion sweets. They also have lunch menus. At the cafe you can see the original red bricks wall of Tokyo Station. They keep it as a historical monument and people can feel the 100 years history there while they enjoy the cafe's food and drinks.