davidm
Strata Poster
Re: Japan
Tuesday 4/11 - Tokyo
I like going up big buildings. Tokyo has a few big buildings that you can go up. So thats what I was
mostly doing today (with a quick +1 thrown in too).
So mostly tourist pictures today (a.k.a. 'a bit of culture' for you heathens).
First big building was one I'd been up before, but since it was a few minutes walk from my hotel and
also free to go up, I started with that;
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government building;
There is an observation gallery at (nearly) the top of each of the towers of the building, but today
only one of them was open so could only go up the right-hand side one (as you look at it in those
pics above).
Annoyingly, half of the gallery area is blocked off by a cafe, which rather obstructed the views of
the city.
But its still a pretty impressive view though the 3/4 of the windows you could actually get to
without buying a coffee.
MOST impressive was the fact that you could see Mt Fuji from there very easily - the previous times
I'd been to Tokyo had always been in summer and the air was never clear enough to see it from the
city (its 60 odd miles away).
ANNOYINGLY though, I had not brought a zoom lens for my good camera with me on the trip, so no
close-ups, but...
(cropped quite a bit ; at 105mm)
Tried with the compact camera since that has a super-zoom on it, but results weren't great;
More Fuij-san later though.
Next stop was a little around the city to somewhere I'd been near before, but not actually up.
Tokyo Tower - which dates from 1958 and I remember watching Godzilla movies as a kid whereupon 'zilla
destroyed this a few times.
This tower is a bit like the French one, in that there are two stages to go up - the first, larger
level was the most busy
View back towards Shinjuku
and on the left, where I was earlier
The orange thing was some robot, wandering around hassling tourists
Tokyo Tower is not far from Roppongi, where there is an abandoned (never operated) cred on top of
a building - presumably not worth the effort in removing? Might well have been quite fun, half-piping
away in the midst of a few Tokyo skyscrapers.
Get another lift to the higher level
Where the city-views are a bit better, this is over towards the Palette Town/Odaiba area I was at a
couple of days earlier
However, some clouds had moved in since earlier and Mt Fuji was now hiding from me
Back at the lower level, a glass floor;
So pretty cool that, glad Godzilla didn't really destroy it.
Speaking of Godzilla, I next walked up to central Tokyo from the tower and found the huge-massive
Godzilla statue that is there...
Ok, so its not really that huge,
A little further up the road is another interesting building - Tokyo International Forum (an
exhibition centre), its not very high but has a rather cool atrium area
Central Tokyo has this big hole in the middle of the skyscrapers and urban sprawl, where lies the
Imperial Palace where the emperor lives. Its not an accessible tourist sight though, so the best
you can do is take a pic of the entrance-way and a scenic bridge
but even that is spoiled by the fact that the bit of palace buildings that we can see, is covered
in scaffolding, oh well never mind...
Hop back on a train next and make my way to Asakusa, which has a few nice touristy sights
Oooh and its near another big building
and also a little park! (Hanayashiki)
Which contains a very old (1953) roller coaster, imaginatively named Roller Coaster
So despite having been to Asakusa before (a couple of times), I had never gone to see the coaster,
so I did that. No Q;
Ride doesn't do much ; cramped into this claustrophobic little park, it winds its way around the
edge of the park with a little drop or two, but nothing really too exciting.
I rode the shot tower as well, just for the view (the other tower ride there was closed though)
But didn't really hang around there very long.
This odd turd-on-a-roof building is the HQ of the Asahi Beer company - clearly been indulging in their
product too much in the meeting when that was signed off!
But I was heading towards this thing, behind the odd beer-building
Tokyo Skytree, a huge communications tower / tourist attraction that has been built since I was
last here - cool!
However, my cunning plan to get there at the end of the afternoon to get some daylight views and then
the dusk was rather scuppered by the popularity of this place as a tourist attraction since there
was a massive Q for tickets and they were distributing timed-entry passes for the place. Oh well,
had to amuse myself at ground level for a while then
XMas markets were set up (at the start of November)
and a Xmas tree - very keen they are on their festivals here
Daylight has gone by the time I can get in the Q for the lifts and actually buy a ticket to the top
of the thing (and its relatively expensive 2000+ yen, Tokyo Tower was 500 I think).
But as I get out of the elevator to the main viewing level, I am greeted with a rather splendid sight
obscured by throngs of tourists also impressed with the view
So I elbow my way through the crowds (OK, I wait politely until a gap opens up) and get some more
snaps of Mt Fuji, this time in the last light of dusk - nice!
Can even see it just in this later night shot
This is the view back towards Asakusa from the first level of the Skytree
That first level is very busy but pretty large but well set up, the lighting was well done so that
there weren't lots of nasty reflections in the windows which you often get in these places.
For another 500ish yen you get another lift up to the higher level, which was a bit odd - it is this
winding corridor that is wrapped around the building that you slowly walk up.
But its not as good as the lower level for pictures I feel - you are further away from the windows
and there is a lot of light up here - and the windows themselves are somewhat obscured by the
infrastructure
The view is splendid though
Strangely, right at the top (or at least the highest bit us tourists can get to) there was a mirrored
room with coloured lights going off - bizarre.
Back at the lower level, there is another glass floor thing, but its not great (and was packed with
people too).
I did really like the Skytree though despite it being a bit out of the main city, really busy and
relatively expensive.
Back in Shinjuku I went out to take some night-shots of there too;
Its not all shiny-shiny in Tokyo, people living out on the streets
I wasn't the only one with the idea behind that last shot (there were a bunch of peeps here taking
pics in fact)
Hmm, didn't work did it;
Last night in this hotel, off somewhere else the next day...
Tuesday 4/11 - Tokyo
I like going up big buildings. Tokyo has a few big buildings that you can go up. So thats what I was
mostly doing today (with a quick +1 thrown in too).
So mostly tourist pictures today (a.k.a. 'a bit of culture' for you heathens).
First big building was one I'd been up before, but since it was a few minutes walk from my hotel and
also free to go up, I started with that;
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government building;
There is an observation gallery at (nearly) the top of each of the towers of the building, but today
only one of them was open so could only go up the right-hand side one (as you look at it in those
pics above).
Annoyingly, half of the gallery area is blocked off by a cafe, which rather obstructed the views of
the city.
But its still a pretty impressive view though the 3/4 of the windows you could actually get to
without buying a coffee.
MOST impressive was the fact that you could see Mt Fuji from there very easily - the previous times
I'd been to Tokyo had always been in summer and the air was never clear enough to see it from the
city (its 60 odd miles away).
ANNOYINGLY though, I had not brought a zoom lens for my good camera with me on the trip, so no
close-ups, but...
(cropped quite a bit ; at 105mm)
Tried with the compact camera since that has a super-zoom on it, but results weren't great;
More Fuij-san later though.
Next stop was a little around the city to somewhere I'd been near before, but not actually up.
Tokyo Tower - which dates from 1958 and I remember watching Godzilla movies as a kid whereupon 'zilla
destroyed this a few times.
This tower is a bit like the French one, in that there are two stages to go up - the first, larger
level was the most busy
View back towards Shinjuku
and on the left, where I was earlier
The orange thing was some robot, wandering around hassling tourists
Tokyo Tower is not far from Roppongi, where there is an abandoned (never operated) cred on top of
a building - presumably not worth the effort in removing? Might well have been quite fun, half-piping
away in the midst of a few Tokyo skyscrapers.
Get another lift to the higher level
Where the city-views are a bit better, this is over towards the Palette Town/Odaiba area I was at a
couple of days earlier
However, some clouds had moved in since earlier and Mt Fuji was now hiding from me
Back at the lower level, a glass floor;
So pretty cool that, glad Godzilla didn't really destroy it.
Speaking of Godzilla, I next walked up to central Tokyo from the tower and found the huge-massive
Godzilla statue that is there...
Ok, so its not really that huge,
A little further up the road is another interesting building - Tokyo International Forum (an
exhibition centre), its not very high but has a rather cool atrium area
Central Tokyo has this big hole in the middle of the skyscrapers and urban sprawl, where lies the
Imperial Palace where the emperor lives. Its not an accessible tourist sight though, so the best
you can do is take a pic of the entrance-way and a scenic bridge
but even that is spoiled by the fact that the bit of palace buildings that we can see, is covered
in scaffolding, oh well never mind...
Hop back on a train next and make my way to Asakusa, which has a few nice touristy sights
Oooh and its near another big building
and also a little park! (Hanayashiki)
Which contains a very old (1953) roller coaster, imaginatively named Roller Coaster
So despite having been to Asakusa before (a couple of times), I had never gone to see the coaster,
so I did that. No Q;
Ride doesn't do much ; cramped into this claustrophobic little park, it winds its way around the
edge of the park with a little drop or two, but nothing really too exciting.
I rode the shot tower as well, just for the view (the other tower ride there was closed though)
But didn't really hang around there very long.
This odd turd-on-a-roof building is the HQ of the Asahi Beer company - clearly been indulging in their
product too much in the meeting when that was signed off!
But I was heading towards this thing, behind the odd beer-building
Tokyo Skytree, a huge communications tower / tourist attraction that has been built since I was
last here - cool!
However, my cunning plan to get there at the end of the afternoon to get some daylight views and then
the dusk was rather scuppered by the popularity of this place as a tourist attraction since there
was a massive Q for tickets and they were distributing timed-entry passes for the place. Oh well,
had to amuse myself at ground level for a while then
XMas markets were set up (at the start of November)
and a Xmas tree - very keen they are on their festivals here
Daylight has gone by the time I can get in the Q for the lifts and actually buy a ticket to the top
of the thing (and its relatively expensive 2000+ yen, Tokyo Tower was 500 I think).
But as I get out of the elevator to the main viewing level, I am greeted with a rather splendid sight
obscured by throngs of tourists also impressed with the view
So I elbow my way through the crowds (OK, I wait politely until a gap opens up) and get some more
snaps of Mt Fuji, this time in the last light of dusk - nice!
Can even see it just in this later night shot
This is the view back towards Asakusa from the first level of the Skytree
That first level is very busy but pretty large but well set up, the lighting was well done so that
there weren't lots of nasty reflections in the windows which you often get in these places.
For another 500ish yen you get another lift up to the higher level, which was a bit odd - it is this
winding corridor that is wrapped around the building that you slowly walk up.
But its not as good as the lower level for pictures I feel - you are further away from the windows
and there is a lot of light up here - and the windows themselves are somewhat obscured by the
infrastructure
The view is splendid though
Strangely, right at the top (or at least the highest bit us tourists can get to) there was a mirrored
room with coloured lights going off - bizarre.
Back at the lower level, there is another glass floor thing, but its not great (and was packed with
people too).
I did really like the Skytree though despite it being a bit out of the main city, really busy and
relatively expensive.
Back in Shinjuku I went out to take some night-shots of there too;
Its not all shiny-shiny in Tokyo, people living out on the streets
I wasn't the only one with the idea behind that last shot (there were a bunch of peeps here taking
pics in fact)
Hmm, didn't work did it;
Last night in this hotel, off somewhere else the next day...
