It's an amazing city, with so much going on and with distinct subsections: Roppongi is different from Shinjuku is different from Shibuya is different from Ueno...you get the idea. For the younger crowds, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, and Roppongi are probably going to be the most fun. But it all depends on what you're looking for. This time around, I was mostly there to SEE the city, to walk around and photograph it, but restraining myself to only a portion. (Let me say here for those of you who've not gone: it's a BIG city, busier and more crowded than New York, and much, much bigger. The greater metro area has a population of 33 million.) So, for this trip, I only visited the following areas: Ikebukuro (where I stayed but did not sightsee), Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, Roppongi, Ebisu, and Tsukiji (where the fish market is).
I guess I'll now go back to the beginning...
I caught the night bus from Osaka to Tokyo, which left around 11 PM, heading first to Kyoto. Construction on the freeway caused a delay, so the 45 minute drive to Kyoto took 90. That would have been not-so-bad, but the heat was turned way up as, for reasons I've not yet uncovered, the Japanese have low cold tolerance, high heat tolerance, and don't sweat. Or at least they don't sweat until it's 102 with 95% humidity. Drives me nuts. Anyway, the bus was HOT, and though I'd paid more (about $60) to ride the good bus, a Benz (yes, as in Mercedes, and no, I'm not joking), it was just not that comfortable. The bus finally cooled off and I got to sleep a bit about 1 AM. Now Tokyo is only about a 6 hour drive with no traffic, and yet we made, count them, 2 stops. TWO. Why, I don't know, as there was a toilet on the bus and most of us were sleeping. I could have dealt with one stop ok, but two...killing me.
We arrived outside of Shinjuku station around 7 in the morning, and like most big city areas that are more business than residential, there wasn't much open yet. I couldn't check into my ryokan (Japanese inn) until 3 PM. I found a Starbucks (the refuge of nonsmokers...but I will say that Tokyo is miles ahead of Osaka in terms of nonsmoking places) and had some coffee, waiting a bit for things to open, then I stuck my bag in a locker and headed out with just my camera. I walked all around Shinjuku taking pictures of buildings, which is probably the best area for looking at the architecture of skyscrapers in Tokyo. By around 11, I figured the photography museum in Ebisu was open, so I hopped a train there. The museum had only one exhibition open (two more were slated to open on Saturday...), and it was a collection of award winning advertising photos. Some of them were quite cool, others quite pedestrian, but I didn't quite feel I got my money or effort's worth. 
Back in Shinjuku, I found Shinjuku Gyoen, a large park ($2 to enter), and the weather was so fabulously nice I walked around it for a bit, took some pictures, then plopped down with my book for a while. I missed the peak of the ume (plum) blossom season, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't miss the peak of the sakura (cherry) blossoms while I'm in Korea. Nevertheless, I think I got some nice shots of the ume flowers.I then went to check in at the ryokan. I recommend this place to people staying in Tokyo: Kimi Ryokan. It's in Ikebukuro, which is not a hip locale, but it's cheap (Y4500/night/single; Y6000/night/double), very clean, and gives you a view into a Japanese inn. The only downside I can see is if you like to stay out late; this place has a 1 AM curfew. But, on the plus side, they have a Japanese furo (bath tub), which is heavenly after a day of walking around. I soaked for a while after getting checked in, took a much needed nap, then headed back out to Shinjuku for dinner and some views of the lights.
The next day, Wednesday, I woke up surprisingly early, around 7, considering the day I'd had before, all the walking I'd done, and the fact that I went to bed after midnight. I started my morning with an hour in a manga cafe. I'm going to guess most of you don't know what that is since I only heard about it since I've come back to Japan. Manga (or Japanese comics) cafes are 24-hour joints where you can rent, for varying lengths of time, what is essentially a tiny cubicle with a comfortable chair and a computer. And of course a selection of manga you can take back to your cubicle. For the bargain price of Y300 (about $3), I got one hour. If you happen to miss the last train home (usually around 12:30 or 1:00 AM), you can get some kind of night rate, like 6 hours for Y1100 or something like that. Quite interesting, though I've not yet had to take advantage of the night rate. Anyway, the place I was in offered free drinks from the vending machine (the ones in paper cups, not cans), so I took advantage of that while I checked my email and waited for things to open.
Around 9, I headed into Harajuku, from where I would walk through Aoyama to see some interesting architecture, and then on to Roppongi to see a gallery and get a view of the city.
Harajuku was about as dead as you could expect to find it, with no shops even open yet, so the walk was less interesting than it would have otherwise been. In Aoyama, however, I did find some cool buildings to photograph, my favorite pictured here. (The lines, the mix of concrete and glass, are supposed to mimic the "winter-bared branches of the Zelkova trees" which line the road the building is on.)
Roppongi is the old expat/gaijin hangout, where the old US barracks used to be, and was until a few years ago the seedy part of the city (housing the main red-light district). But, a few years back, some redevelopment came through, Roppongi Hills came out, and now there's actually stuff to do there before the sun goes down. I hit Mori Tower, which has a fantastic view of the city as well as the World's highest art space (so my Lonely Planet guidebooks claims, though on the 53rd floor, I'm inclined to believe it). I would have liked to see the view at night, but I got there around lunch time, so I checked out the view, sipped a grossly over-priced smoothie, and then went to look at the art space. The exhibition was called "Art is for the Spirit: Works from the UBS Collection." (Interestingly, I have investments with UBS but didn't know they collected artwork.) It was a terrific exhibition, though, showing many different kinds of works on several themes. Some of my favorites were (sorry no photos) a series of "portraits" done by arranging sugar cubes dipped in coffee to attain varied levels of darkness, from white to dark brown; the series, entitled "Pixels," looked like low-quality digital images of faces. Another favorite was a series of videos running concurrently which showed patches of cement as someone painted portraits on them using water which dried as he was painting and which would completely disappear after he'd finished; there were five to seven of these playing and they looped, so that he was always painting at least one face while the others dried up and disappeared. The last one was another video project called "Whose Utopia?" in which the artist beautifully shot a lightbulb factory and a clothing factory, showing the machinery and the people working there, doing the incredibly repetitive and mundane tasks that must be done so that we in the developed countries can enjoy the products. Very powerful stuff.
From there, I went back to the ryokan, showered, then headed out to Shibuya to capture in photographs the movement of people at that famous intersection. (If you're a film buff, it was pictured briefly in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, though she neglected to show the most interesting part of that space.) Unfortunately, I don't know how to pose what I've done to this blog yet, so when (if) I figure it out, I will add the photos, but for now let me describe it. Two large streets intersect just outside of Shibuya station, which as to be one of the busiest in Tokyo. At the four corners, crowds build like water behind a dam, slowly gathering mass, until the lights change and all four corners are free to cross at once. One moment the streets are empty, then a few people start out before the lights have actually changed, and then there is just the mass of moving bodies, sea-like, people moving and churning, until, quite suddenly and seemingly without signal, the flow stops, the streets clear, and the cars again traverse the intersection. It's mesmerizing. I seriously could watch it for hours. I had to meet my friend (a former student from Mason) for dinner, however, so I settled on a seat on the second floor of a Starbucks which overlooks the place, set up my camera on a tripod and, using a timer feature that allows me to take a photo every few seconds, recorded the cycle several times. I'll try to figure out how to make a video and post it here...
Dinner that night with my friend Maya in an izakaya (a Japanese bar & grill). Good food, nice atmosphere, and a pleasant couple of hours catching up.
The next morning I met another friend and former student of mine, Evelyn, and her husband, Man, and her friend Yvette. Evelyn and Yvette are Taiwanese (nicknames), while Man is American. Yvette is studying Japanese in Tokyo and Evelyn and Man were stopping in Tokyo while on their return trip from Taiwan where they had just had a wedding reception (their wedding reception in Virginia had taken place more than a year before, while I was still there).
Together we went to Tsukiji Fish Market, world renowned for selling crazy amounts of seafood. If you want to see the action, you have to go around 5 or 6, but we got there around 11. Most of the stalls were cleaning up, but I still got some nice shots of the weirdness of the place, some gigantic fish, and some blood and gore. I recommend it.
Unfortunately Man wasn't feeling well, so we skipped sushi and headed into Akihabara, the electronics hub of the city, if not the country. We had lunch there, walked around for a bit, then hopped another train to see the Tokyo-Edo Museum, which is fascinated for showing great displays of old Edo (Tokyo before it was called Tokyo) and Tokyo as it began to be Westernized after the US forced Japan's doors open through military might. (Yes, I'm a bit sympathetic here...the US pulled the same kind of imperialistic crap with Hawaii.) One of the best parts of the museum were the scale models built to show what sections of the city might have looked like way back.
I left my friends there, promising to meet the next morning before I left Tokyo, and headed back to the ryokan again to shower and get ready to meet Maki, a woman who worked in the office at Aioi High School, the place I worked when I first lived in Japan. She has been living in Tokyo for a year but will be moving back to Kobe this coming weekend. We met in Ikebukuro (where I was staying) and walked to a restaurant to eat. We chatted and caught up. In spite of the intervening years when, I presume, she didn't have much opportunity to practice her English, she still speaks it remarkably well.
My last morning, I got up and met Evelyn, Man, and Yvette at their hotel so that I could see the pictures from their wedding reception. We hung out a bit, but the glorious weather that had graced Tokyo for the last three days had given up to rain, and so, not feeling like walking much in the wet, I parted company with them and caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Kyoto, taking a local train home from there.
All in all, a good trip...busy, tiring, but good. I'm glad I did this trip before my Seoul trip, though, as it's showed me that while I can still go out and walk all day, I probably don't want to do that too many days in a row. I'll be in Seoul for just over a week, so I'll have to pace myself. I'll write more when that adventure is over...but for now I need to get to sleep (it's 2 AM), as I've got to attend graduation tomorrow.
Be well.
