Explore!

Location | Tokyo

It was another lonely day. I went to Tokyo Tower, which was a really good view of the city (compared to Odaiba‘s Fuji TV Building anyway). There are a lot of temples surrounding the tower, so I also got to walk in a quiet alleyway as well. When I got to the tower, there weren’t that many people. I went and bought my ticket to see both the main observatory and the special observatory (which is higher up).

Tokyo Tower

The elevator going up to the main observatory was ok, though a little scary because you could see outside. Once in the main observatory, it was really interesting to see all the different views around Tokyo. It just seems like it’s a never-ending city of buildings!

View from Tokyo Tower

The weather wasn’t that great so I couldn’t see Mt. Fuji, but I could see Shinjuku, the Meiji-Jingu Park, and various other monuments around Tokyo. I was up there for awhile, just looking at the buildings, especially the strange buddhist temple that looks like a spaceship landed on a top of a bunch of residences (talk about being out of place!).

After checking out the main observatory, I went up to the special observatory. Now that ride was EXTREMELY SCARY. It kept going higher and higher and I really didn’t think I had a fear of heights, but for some reason I got kind of scared. It was probably mainly because I was the only one in the elevator (besides the guy controlling it) and it was a box suspended in the air by cables…

Anyway, after that I went down to the bottom and checked out all the little shops. After Tokyo Tower, I went to the Shiodome area to check out the Tokyo Advertising Museum. The museum was small, but still had some interesting things to look at. A guide/employee came up to me to give me a brochure… but then realized I wasn’t Japanese and gave me an English brochure :). I also got chided for taking pictures in the museum… apparently that is a big no-no. Oops!

I left the museum to go back to Shibuya. At Shibuya I encountered a television crew — of which I couldn’t tell if they were speaking English or not. I was sitting on the train station side of the museum to observe the advertising space, but then these busses arrived and these groups of people come out and they were wearing red, blue and white hats. Apparently they were having some sort of game-show or something there. It was so strange because it threw people off.

Shibuya

I also spent time observing another group of guys trying to pick up girls. It was really ridiculous because one of the guy reminded me of Bruce and I kept watching him trying to pick up girls and eventually get rejected. It was really strange… I wonder how these guys get all this time to do this!! It’s like they have nothing better to do than observe girls and try to pick them up.

So after awhile, I left to go do some shopping. I was trying to find Loft, but I ended up going in the wrong direction and ended up in a little alleyway with a bunch of cute little shops. I got a top for 1500 yen. I’d say that’s a good deal. Then I went to Tokyu Hands again, but didn’t buy anything. I came out and went to Picnic on Picnic, a cute stationary store. After that, I found my way to Loft and that store was great!! There was a Muji there too.

After all of this, I went to Omotesando to meet up with Suma and Shivali. Unfortnately, Shivali didn’t show up, so Suma and I went to eat because we were starving. We ate at a small udon shop and then headed to Harajuku. Harajuku’s Takeshita Dori was a really great shopping area. The stores seemed more affordable than the other side of Harajuku.

There I got a grey top that gives the feeling of being layered and a black jacket type deal. There were both 1900 yen, so pretty cheap (for Japan anyway!). We got some crepes after this and walked back to the Laforet Department store. After all of this, we went back to the hotel to wait for everyone to go to dinner.

We had a simple dinner at a izakaya close by the hotel. We then decided we wanted crepes, so we ran to Harajuku, but everything was closed down already (boo!). We ended up in Takeshita Dori again and there was this crowd of people near a 7-11. Apparently some Akihabara idols were there and a bunch of nerdy looking guys were hanging around them.

After leaving Harajuku we went back to the hotel and I began to pack.

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]