Japan Meteorological Agency
Every typhoon name issued across the Northwestern Pacific gets its label from a forecasting center inside this Toranomon building.
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The JMA traces its lineage to Japan's first Tokyo weather observatory, founded in 1875. Today it runs the WMO-designated RSMC Tokyo Typhoon Center — one of the world's few official cyclone-naming hubs — and sits at the core of Japan's nationwide Earthquake Early Warning system. That makes it the single building responsible for most of the disaster alerts that reach every phone in the country.
What to look for
- The RSMC Tokyo Typhoon Center, established July 1989 inside headquarters, which tracks and names all tropical cyclones across the Northwestern Pacific
- Himawari satellite imagery — the primary satellite data source the agency uses for land weather forecasting across Japan
- The building itself in Toranomon, Minato, where JMA relocated on November 24, 2020, replacing its long-running Otemachi, Chiyoda address
Headquarters is in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo; the agency moved to this address in November 2020.
Japan Meteorological Agency is one of 35 sights worth the detour in Tokyo, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Tokyo pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Tokyo
- Mode Gakuen Cocoon TowerA 50-story school curved like a cocoon — white aluminum and dark-blue glass, criss-crossed by diagonal white lines — that beat 150 rival proposals and won Skyscraper of the Year.
- Tokyo SkytreeAt 634 metres, the height isn't random — 6-3-4 spells "Musashi," the ancient name for this exact corner of Tokyo.
- Tokyo TowerA third of its steel came from US tanks scrapped after the Korean War — Japan's postwar recovery, painted orange and bolted into the sky.
- National Diet LibraryBorn in 1948 as a "citadel of popular sovereignty," Japan's national library holds 12 million volumes — and anyone can walk in.
- Akihabara (Electric Town)The black market that outgrew itself and became Japan's otaku capital.
- Tokyo National MuseumOne in ten of every artwork Japan has ever officially designated a National Treasure lives here.