As the train rounds the northwest corner, it passes the large transit hub of Ikebukuro, comparatively quiet Meijiro and the student haunt of Takadanobaba.

BBC: Seeing Tokyo along the Yamanote Line

"We get asked all the time by men to go with them to hotels to take naked pictures, " says a 14-year-old girl loitering outside a bar in one of Tokyo's neon-lit entertainment meccas, Ikebukuro.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia

The cash they raise will be used to pay creditors and to invest in the grocery business, which, to judge by the Seiyu supermarket opposite the company's headquarters in Ikebukuro, badly needs a face-lift.

ECONOMIST: Japanese retailing: Look out | The

The Seibu Saison group of companies, of which Seiyu is the nucleus, owned track running from the Chichibu mountains west of Tokyo to Ikebukuro and Shinjuku in the city centre although the railway and the retailer parted company in the 1970s.

ECONOMIST: Japanese retailing