Sunday, February 4, 2007

Shinjuku / Harajuku / Shibuya

I hopped on the JR line (one of the competing subways) and took it to Shinjuku. I’ve been to Shinjuku before and I will definitely go again. It is one of the most populated parts of Tokyo, visited both by locals and tourists. It’s bright, modern, and young people flock there as the sun sets. The JR line basically splits Shinjuku into two parts. The west side which is mostly office buildings, government buildings, and upscale hotels, and the east side, which is the party area with clubs, bars, restaurants and variety shops.

I began my day on the west side. After getting a glimpse, from the top of Tokyo Tower, of the sun setting behind Fuji, I decided I wanted another shot at taking some pictures. I went to an enormous building (there’s a picture of it in an older blog) built by the government. From the 45th floor the view is incredible. I did get some great shots of Fuji as well a daytime skyline of Tokyo. After Shinjuku, I hopped back on the JR line to Harajuku. Harajuku is what I consider the Japanese equivalent of the Champs-Elyse. There’s Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, and dozens of other swank European and American stores. In addition to the shopping, the area is famous for crazy dressed girls and women. In fact, Gwen Stefani (a pop singer) sang a song paying homage called Harajuku girls. It was nighttime when I got to the main drag, but the women were, in fact, dressed CRAZY. Hair in every which direction, basically they were walking, talking modern art pieces. In Harajuku I met a couple friends at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. There were a few things marvelous about this restaurant. The first is that the food was great. Second, the food was incredibly cheap. For any of you who eat sushi, basically each roll was a dollar. The most expensive rolls they had were 2 dollars, and the 2 dollar rolls had fish on them I’d never seen before. I was stuffed after 3 rolls, but my friends out did me with 5 plates each. The third cool thing, as the name implies, is that all the food is on a conveyor belt, so you eat at your own pace and as often (or not) as you want.

After Harajuku I walked with my friends to Shibuya, which was only about 15 minutes away. Shibuya, like Shinjuku is a lot of flash. For those of you who’ve seen the movie Lost in Translation. There is a scene with a massive cross walk in Tokyo, this crosswalk is in Shibuya. It’s worth going up a few floors and watching. In Shibuya, we grabbed some coffee from Starbucks, which to make the line move faster, only serves tall size coffees. It was a nice Saturday.





5 comments:

angelaphotos said...

I love the idea of conveyor belt restaurants... but talk about the height of laziness :)

again, love the pictures

Sarah said...

hooray for the pictures! I feel like I am there- I wish I had blogged when I was in London...

Jonathan said...

although it is the height of laziness, you have to make your own instant green tea... so that takes at least 20 seconds :)

Unknown said...

I love your pictures - they are excellent! I'm glad Angela showed me your blog, you've got me wanting to go to Japan more than ever now! (thanks for the JET info - that will be good stuff for my interview)

CP said...

I am LOVING all your photos!!!! Can't wait to see the pics with Ang!!