So just how big is Tokyo really?

The answer:  Big, so big in fact that it is fairly impossible to grasp the size of the city even when you live in the center of it.  I've done a little research and come up with a few little comparisons to help try to put the size of this place into perspective for people back from where I am from. 

The first thing to keep in mind is that the official definition of a city becomes useless when talking about mega-cities like Tokyo.  The official boundaries mean very little when the density beyond the official boundaries are higher than even the densest definition of a city like Atlanta, GA, for example. 

By the strictest and most dense definition of Tokyo the city has "only" around 8.8 million people at a density of 14,000 people per square kilometer. Atlanta, GA at it's most strict and dense definition has 550,000 people at a density of "only" 1,500 people per square kilometer.  I say "only" in quotations because no one I know of back home would ever call central Atlanta a "low density" area.  It is definitely a major city by most people's standards back in the States.

But here is where things get crazy.  If we take the densest definition of Atlanta and apply it to Tokyo to form the boundaries of the city then Tokyo's size swells to nearly 40 MILLION PEOPLE.   In fact some of the more "official" rankings show the Tokyo metro area to have around 32-36 million and at those levels the density is still MUCH higher than Atlanta.

To really drive the point home though we must compare it to New York City.  Using the definition of New York to achieve a population of 20.4 million people requires stretching the metro area to a size of 4,500 square miles but at this definition the density drops to "only" 1,800 people per square kilometer.  Tokyo on the other hand using a metro definition of 35million people covers 5,200 square miles at a density of 2,600 people per square kilometer.  That is nearly a 45% greater density covering an additional 700 square miles!  Technically New York has some even larger boundary definitions that make it the largest metro area in the world just by pure land area definition but at those figures the density level drops so low that it only hurts New York's case.

Here is what it looks like in satellite form.  Keep in mind that although the frame might be slightly difference between two photos that the scale is the same, as you can check for yourself. 

First up is Atlanta.  What you are basically looking for is the "greyness" of the image to show you the amount of urban build up.  As you can see Atlanta is basically all green except for a few little "core" areas.

Now Tokyo at the same scale:

Mind blowing isn't it?  Tokyo's scale of urban build up can't fit inside a usable image to show a comparison between the two as if I zoomed out to show the entire scope of the city the Atlanta image would show essentially nothing but solid green. 

Want another image to think about?

At around the 37 million people mark Tokyo has a land area roughly the size of Mobile, Washington and Clarke county combined, which is simply massive for a single city, but at the same time incredibly small when you realize this:  The population for the ENTIRE STATE of California is also 37 million people.   So depending on the definition the metropolis of the CITY of Tokyo has more people than one of the largest and most populated STATES in America.

But now let me break it down to a single train station, as if you come to Japan this is where you can actually start to these these numbers at work.

First up is Tokyo's rail network, the most impressive in the world with approximately 120 different commuter rail lines and 1,500-1,800 stations, depending on your definition of where the network ends and begins:

The largest station by passenger use is Shinjuku station, the busiest train station in the world by a massive margin and possibly the busiest place in the world on any given day..

How busy?  Every day the AVERAGE number of passengers is 3.6 million.  No that isn't a typo.  Not per year, not per month, nor per week.  Per DAY.   And get this, the station isn't even open all day.  It closes for  4hrs every night.

If you want to do the math that is 180,000 passengers per hour!  That means every hour Shinjuku station processes almost twice as many people as the capacity of Alabama or Auburn's football stadium.

Visual reference for everyone.

 

The above two images every hour for 20hrs per day, 365 days a year. 

For reference Atlanta International Airport, which is the busiest airport in the entire world, only handles 240,000 passengers per DAY which is amount of people Shinjuku station processes in 80 minutes.

So maybe "big" isn't quite the right word for this place.