Tokyo, Japan

For my next trip I decided to go to Tokyo, since it's one of my favorite cities and has been a while since I've been there. This time around I decided to bring along a companion, Mother Nomad. She took Junior Nomad and me all around the world when we were younger so I thought I'd reciprocate.

We flew in Tuesday afternoon and participated in an almost comical health screening - people in clean suits and masks boarded the plane once we got to the gate. Some carried thermal camcorders and pointed them at random passengers while their colleagues peered at others and collected health questionnaires. While I admire the effort I'm somewhat skeptical as to its effectiveness. If someone on board had the swine flu they would have long since infected some fellow passengers given the long flight and recycled air, and the newly infected would show no symptoms at that time. I guess they could have quarantined the whole airplane but that would have been incredibly disruptive.

We got to the hotel, settled in, had an incredible dinner at one of the mall restaurants and the passed out due to jetlag.

We got up this morning and were unpleasantly surprised as to the weather. We had been expecting sunshine and temperatures in the 70s and got clouds and 60s. At least the cloud cover was high enough during breakfast that we had a decent view.


We hoped the rain would hold off and decided to walk to the Roppongi Hills complex.

I love advertising out here, there are always things up that you wouldn't see anywhere else.

Here's a shot of the Tokyo Midtown complex where we are staying.


The concept of the mammoth supercomplex (office, museum, shopping, hotel) has been refined here. Ark Hills (visible in the first picture) was one of the early ones, Roppongi Hills is newer, and Tokyo Midtown is the newest. The closest to this concept in NY is the Time Warner Center, even that lacks some of the scale. I think a big reason for the size is that the buildings need to be earthquake resistant which makes them twice as thick as their NY equivalents.

Below is a shot of the iconic Roppongi Crossing.

Two things are of particular note in this picture. Firstly the sushi place is named Tsukiji which is the name of the famous fish market. Secondly, the Citibank is one of the more important ones in the city. For some peculiar reason many ATMs have opening hours, which doesn't make sense for what is effectively a robot. So if you need money during off hours this is one of the places to get it.

Below is one of the well known bars in Roppongi.


Here's a shot of the Mori building in the Roppongi Hills complex. We got there just when it started pouring so we went to the Mori Art Museum at the top.

The museum is mainly for modern art and there was an exhibition from various artists curated by a museum in Austria. Some of the pieces were pretty cool (a fountain certified to be pumping LSD with carnivorous plants hanging over it) and some were pretty silly (a cubist painting asserting that it makes the viewer question the relationship with their body...).

One of highlights of the museum is the observation deck. The views from there are stunning, except it was pouring rain. This is the most intriguing shot from there.


I have never seen a helipad that big. The building to the right must be a hospital. Just above it is the National Arts Center, and you can see the Shinjuku skyscrapers in the distance.

We had a quiet afternoon and a nice dinner.