East side of Shinjuku Station (Photo: Geoff Botting)

(Writer: Geoff Botting)

If you look around, you may even spot a few antiques – neon lights can last forever if not damaged, and a few businesses still use signs that are clearly decades old.

Neon signs were invented in Europe late in the 19th century after it was discovered that neon gas in glass tubes turns colorful and glows when electrical current is passed through it. In short order, signboard makers heated and then shaped such glass tubes to the outline of letters, filled the tubes with gas, and viola! A new form of outdoor advertising was born.

In Japan, however, it wasn't until the postwar years that neon started to take off. And take off it did. Thanks to very liberal zoning regulations, business owners festooned Japanese cities with neon signs from around the 1960s. They even rented space atop apartment buildings to erect massive signs. Many urban apartment dwellers live with a neon glow coming through their windows every night.

Even overseas, in London's Piccadilly Circus or New York's Times Square, some of the biggest and most prominent electric signs are the ones advertising Japanese products sold in those countries.

Indeed, neon signs have come to symbolize Japan's modern affluence and vibrancy. Few scenes of modern Japan are as iconic as Ginza or Shinjuku brightly lit up at night time - and few sights as memorable as the Chuo Dori in the former for tourists venturing out in the plush Ginza district at night.