Tokyo Shinjuku Kabukicho Live Camera

This camera covers Kabukicho, the entertainment district packed into a few blocks northeast of Shinjuku Station. Restaurants, bars, hotels, cinemas and game centres are stacked several floors up, and the signage carries most of the visual weight after dark.

The name is a leftover from a plan that never happened. Postwar redevelopment intended a kabuki theatre for the area; the theatre was never built, but the name stuck to the district that grew there instead.

The daily cycle is the thing to watch. Mornings are subdued and the streets are largely given over to deliveries and cleaning. Activity builds through the late afternoon, and the densest hours come after the last trains have run, when people who missed them are still out on the street.