A little more than 12 million people live in Tokyo while hundreds of thousands of others commute everyday from surrounding areas to work and do business in Tokyo. Tokyo is the central place of politics, economy, culture and academics in Japan as well as the home of the Japanese emperor and the seat of the national government, as well as a major business and financial centre for all of East Asia.

It is unusual in that it has far fewer skyscrapers than other cities of its size, mostly due to earthquake construction codes: rather, it is mostly comprised of low-rise apartments of six to ten floors and densely-packed family homes. Tokyo is also home to the world's most complex mass transit system, and is world-famous for its crowded rush hours.

Tokyo literally means "eastern capital" in Japanese, a meaning in opposition to an old capital to the west, Kyoto, which was renamed "Saikyo", meaning "western capital", for a brief period of time.

The name was previously spelled Tokio in English; while now thoroughly obsolete, this usage persists in a few rare cases like the Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance company. The name is still spelled Tokio in some other languages like Dutch, Esperanto, German, and Spanish.

Administration
Tokyo has an administrative structure unique among the prefectures of Japan. It is officially designated as a "metropolis" (都 to). Although it generally resembles a prefecture, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government also offers partial city government functions to the 23 special wards comprising the heart of Tokyo, with a combined population of 8,134,688 and an area of 621.3 km2. In addition to the special wards, Tokyo administers twenty-six suburban cities to the west, and a number of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Metropolitan Government's main offices (toch?) are located in the ward of Shinjuku.

According to the Population Census in 2000, Tokyo has a population of 12,064,101 and area of 2186.9 km2. Tokyo is also part of the Greater Tokyo Area, which consists of Tokyo itself and the surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba. The Greater Tokyo area is the largest metropolitan area in the world with a population of 33,418,366.