Akasaka
Ahh, Akasaka. I spent all of my nights here, because I found a cheap capsule hotel which, due to their setup, are an easy way to get a bed to sleep in at very short notice. All the "rooms" (and I use the term rooms loosely) are purchased for one night only, so I had to keep moving my belongings between the hotel and the Akasaka metro station lockers every day. The rooms themselves are capsules about stacked 2 high, each around 8 feet long and maybe 3 feet high. They each had a tv and radio built in, but unfortunately no power outlets or internet access (thus the lack of posts). Othere than sleeping, I also ate a lot of meals in Akasaka because I was coming and going from it so often. Meals I ate included a lunch at likely my favourite Japanese chain Sukiya, an Italian pizza/pasta place, and the famous Anna Miller's. Anna Miller's is an american-style food restaurant, probably best known for the waitresses who wear pink or orange maid outfits. It's sort of the Japanese equivelant to Hooters Restaurant.
Shinjuku is probably the busiest commercial area of Japan. I went there a few times, both during the day and at night, and it is far more interesting at night. It has a lot of the central goverment buildings located around Shinjuku park, and at night it is just street after street of neon lights and crowded sidewalks - typical of a lot of places in central Tokyo it seems. On my last full day in Tokyo I decided to go play a game in Shinjuku one evening, where I'd walk around and see how many different free packages of tissue I could collect from people handing them out on the street. The final result - 19 packages. I brought a few back, but due to volume constraints with luggage, most were left behind. I also got a free big manga book, and some weird food item (I think?) that I have yet to discover the purpose of.
Shinjuku is also home to the nefarious Kabukicho district - the red light district of Tokyo. I wandered through it, and to be honest was a little disappointed. It had all the adult DVD shops and lots of bars and stip clubs and such, but nothing worse than you'd see many other places. I don't know if I just wasn't out late enough (this was around 8pm), or if I was in too central a part of the district, but it had none of the women offering bubble massages, or the vending machines selling porn and used panties... I actually found Himeji to be shadier than the Kabuki district.
Another of the big neon shopping districts, generally associated with trendy youth and music. The majority of the time I spent there was in the giant HMV and Tower Records buildings, searching for a Japanese CD that I was never able to find. From my time wandering around, I found it much the same as Shinjuku other than all the music stores. More hills to walk up though.
Harajuku is actually part of Shibuya, but it's completely different than the central core of Shibuya, and one of my favourite places in Tokyo, so it warrants an entry of its own. Harajuku is most famous right now for the Harajuku girls popularized by Gwen Stefani's dance group, which are a subculture of girls that dress up in various custumes and stand out front the entrance to the Meiji shrine. They were interesting to watch, but Harajuku was so much more than just them. I went to the shrine on Sunday, and I don't really know the religion/tradition, but there were many Japanese families all going to perform some ceremony at the shrine, with all the women and children dressed up in their traditional outfits, and the men mostly all in suits. In some cases there were long almost parade like processions of families. Just outside the shrine they have a big tree surrounded by boards where you could write your prayers/wishes and hang them up. From the shrine I went to the Yoyogi Park, which was the real highlight of the area for me. It's this huge park that is absolutely full of people, and it seemed that everywhere you looked you had a different musician playing, or subculture hanging out, or sport going on, etc. To list just a few of the groups: the Tokyo Rockabilly Club (all slicked out), acting troupes practicing, comedians performing, rock groups, pop groups, drum players, trumpet players, a crazy didgeridoo/pan flute duet going on, jugglers, cosplayers, dancers, sword-fighting practice, various martial artists, soccer playing, highschool ultimate frisbee team practice (awesome to watch!), artists, show-dog practicing, etc etc etc. It has so much diversity everywhere you looked.
Roppongi Hills is just part of Roppongi, but it's the place I really spent all my time in, so I'm just going to talk about it. In the course of my research in various fields I'm interested in, I had come across Roppongi Hills a few times as one of the biggest and most advanced integrated development communities. It was a community designed and built all at once with the goal of having everything necessary for a person located very close. It is seperated by a largely artificial hill from the regular bustle of Tokyo, and contains a massive commercial building (the Mori Tower), apartments, an arena, park, tv studio, museum/art gallery, and a large shopping/restaurant (much of which is underground). Other than the ground floor and the observation platform (which they wanted money to visit, so I didn't see), the Mori tower was off-limits to random tourists, but just wandering around on the hill and down around the arena and park were interesting. They run tours of the entire place, but you need to register weeks in advance for them. It would have been nice to see some of the inner workings of the place, but it still gave me much to think about for my future projects and plans...
(still half of Japan left, stay tuned!)
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