17 November 2024
The new stuff
Shinjuku and Shibuya
It is 25 degrees (celsius) today, that is far too hot. The world is coming to an end for the 7th time (check your history).
What all this means is I have scheduled my remaining days badly. Today should have been a hiking day. Tomorrow is supposed to rain again. So I may have to do some further adjustments to what little time I have left.
Today had to be a rest day, my legs still have no strength in them from yesterday. So I did 30,000 steps around the city, which is easy to do, interrupted by a couple of coffees and store visits. Basically I walked from before 7am until 2:30pm with maybe 30 minutes of coffee breaks.
My eventual destination was all the new things in the Shibuya / Harajuku area. These places all get a lot of press, I have now walked past most of them and been in one of them.
Shinjuku has many great tunnels, but this is the greatest. There is a travelator to the left, but since most people stand still on that, walking is faster.
I stopped here for my first coffee, nice leaves, nice water feature.
Japan really takes xmas seriously. Obviously it is known as fat man gift giving kfc day (seriously). Most office buildings will have a display equal to this, with a security guard who now has a job.
This is the Chuo park in Shinjuku. Most of it is roped off.
Here are the metropolitan towers, you can go up and enjoy the view for free, but not for me today (I have been before).
It was now late enough to head into the area west of the Shinjuku station and check out some ridiculous light fittings and aquariums and fax machines and new ghetto blasters with tape deck and holographic Christmas trees that project a Colonel Sanders on the roof.
There are lots of camera shops, many of them may be parts of the same shop spread across many buildings. My camera is still sold out everywhere. I could sell it for more than I paid.
I suspect this is the first Yodobashi camera store in all of Japan.
Time to leave Shinjuku.
This is the craziest level crossing anywhere in the world. A train comes every 30 seconds. You have to run to get across. It is right by the Sunroute plaza hotel in Yoyogi, which really should just be renamed the Australian tourist hotel.
Time to take a walk through the Meiji Jingu shrine area, without actually seeing the shrine. I have seen it many times before. This photo came out weird, the tree canopy looked great to the naked eye.
The shrine area has the loudest loud speaker system even encountered. I had to put my fingers in my ears. It makes announcements about smoking, littering, crows, dogs. Not at all peaceful despite the announcement declaring that the area is a peaceful place. I saw some other tourists joke about this while I was thinking it, they even offered up the classic "how's the serenity?" line.
Time to flee the loudspeaker onslaught.
Next up it was time for a brief visit to Yoyogi park. There were a lot of people but none of the silly fun stuff that used to go on here.
A lot of Indonesian indentured servants have the day off on Sunday. Just like Hong Kong. Really, they have been holding protest marches about poor treatment in recent times... just like Hong Kong.
Now for the new things in Shibuya. Here is one of the new buildings on one corner.
And on the opposite corner is this fancier one. They both have outdoor gardens. It was very busy here, so I did not go in. Also damn hot.
Instead I headed to the brand new Fender cafe. That entire building is Fender guitars new building, complete with hello kitty guitar ad on the screen, more on that shortly.
Inside is a whole lot of expensive guitars that are 1 of only 2 allowable designs, strat or tele. They really stretch this concept to death, releasing 'new' models all the time which are always the exact. same. thing.
The store is nice, there is a very basic cafe in the basement.
This is the only guitar they have that is remotely different. Hidden in a corner as if they are embarrassed by it.
This is what they should be embarrassed by, but no, it is a giant poster in the entry. Am I now cancelled for picking on Billie?
No joke, this is currently, easily the top selling Fender worldwide. There is a wait list.
I stood here to take a photo of a ridiculous line down the street for a hamburger store (at least 100 people), when the even more ridiculous thing of westerners driving annoying go karts in onesies went past. There are so many of these go kart groups now they are at risk of smashing into each other. I think I saw 10 different groups in the 1 hour I was in the area.
This star wars toy shop was actually good. A lot of huge things to look at that are not for sale, and they were happy for you to take photos. A lot of shops in this area, including the Fender shop above, are actually not selling anything, they are just trying to outdo each other for band awareness.
Time to head into Shibuya proper. I was here the other day at night for the cancelled Halloween display. Now I am back in blazing sunlight.
I headed up to the fairly new roof garden that looks like it is on an old train line, but I do not think it is. Very busy. A lot of it was also roped off because it looks like it is falling apart, and then another area was roped off for a Sake tasting event.
It was very hot on the roof garden, too hot for rock climbing and skate boarding. So instead I headed back to the subway Ginza line, which because Shibuya station has been under re-construction for 20 years now, was very difficult to find! Signs pointing to Ginza line were wrong. Temporary fencing made many suggested routes impossible. For all the time I have been coming to Japan, the Shibuya station has been a frustrating experience.