Roppongi!

Me in Roppongi! Hinokicho park specifically.

I started off by just wandering around the area around my hotel. My hotel’s in a part of Roppongi where most of the neighborhoods are this weird mix of tourism-apartments-office buildings-retail-public space. The one I’m in is called Izumi Gardens. Not a lot of retail, but there’s a couple hotels, a couple office towers (big skyscrapers), a bunch of apartments, and a ton of gardens. There’s some narrow, pretty streets lined with sakura trees that connect it to the nearby compounds (ARK towers, which has a ton of restaurants and Suntory Hall opera house, and Shiroyama Gardens, which houses part of Asahi TV and even more gardens).

About those compounds, I’ll say this: the first time I drove into Seattle, I said I felt like I felt like an extra in Blade Runner.

No. NOW I feel like an extra in Blade Runner.

ARK Towers Arcade

Driving into Tokyo on the bus from the airport, we passed some ginormous corporate headquarters that look like mini fortresses, neon everywhere we looked, giant towers as far as the eye can see (picture Manhattan, except bigger), and traffic, crowds, and people everywhere. Even in Roppongi I get the feeling I’m living in one of the well-to-do suburbs of a Blade Runner arcology. You look left, and you see a quaint little 1.5 lane road lined with cherry blossoms. You look right, and you see a fifty-story office tower looming above a 3-level arcade of plazas set into a giant pit next to the tower. Inside the pit there is an accurate reproduction of a 19^th century French bistro, a traditional Japanese noodle house, an electronics shop, and a 10-foot-tall abstract brass statue. Turn around and you see a sleek black-granite-and-glass block of a building across a reflecting pool.

It’s weird. In a good way, though.

The sakura trees were all numbered for some reason

Anyway, back to my day. I wandered in and out of the gardens, snapping photos of them as I went. I didn’t get any of my favorite (the one behind the granite-and-glass block I mentioned above), as I wasn’t sure if it was allowed. A police officer saw my camera and told me (while being very friendly) something about taking photos and the US Embassy (which was on the other side of a wall in the garden). I didn’t know if he said ‘near’ the embassy or ‘of’ the embassy, and didn’t want to start my trip off with a run-in with the police, so I just erred on the side of not getting smacked with a nightstick.

I didn’t go to the embassy for a similar reason; there were police CRAWLING all over the streets around the US embassy (which was interesting; the Swedish and Spanish embassies were just around the corner, with NO visible security). There were signs everywhere saying to not walk this way because of construction, don’t stand next to this wall because of terrorism, etc. I figure if I actually need to get there, it won’t be a problem, but didn’t feel like being shooed away and chastised by the police for nothing.

After getting tired of the gardens, I went to check out the two mega-neighborhoods in Roppongi: Tokyo Midtown and Roppongi Hills. They sound like neighborhoods or parts of town, but they’re really suped up versions of the all-in-one compound I’m in. Think Atlantic Station on steroids, but more three dimensional and more packed together.

Tokyo Midtown has a five story mall, giant office towers housing Konami and Fujifilm, the Suntory art

Bridge from Tokyo midtown Hinokicho Park.

museum (and a couple smaller galleries), and a ginormous park (which I got plenty of photos of). I wandered the park there for a while, then accidentally went to a museum about the history of rice. I thought I was going to a exhibition about modern Japanese food! That’s what the sign made it look like! Instead I got a kinda weird education on the importance of rice in Japan, via modern graphic design. Interesting if somewhat random.

After that, I got my first legit meal in Japan (I’m not counting the hotel breakfast :P). I originally planned on going to a place called Jyugyo Yonehachi, which serves sticky, chewy, flavored rice called Okowa (which I’d never heard of before). The restaurant was full, so instead of just getting a big bowl of the stuff, I got a bento box to go instead. That turned out to be for the best, as the rice was pretty flavorless; no salt, and the flavorings were mostly bland beans and peas. The bento had a bunch of pickled and steamed veggies and some fish cakes, though, which I enjoyed. The rice was interesting though, as I swear it had the consistency of taffy. I had to use both hands to tear chunks off the rice balls they gave me.

Okowa rice on the left, cooked veggies up top, pickled
veggies and fish cakes on the bottom right.

After that, I hoofed it over to Roppongi Hills, which turned out to basically be a swankadelic mall, with a museum and some offices and apartments attached. It was nice to wander around for a bit, but I’d been on my feet since 8 that morning, so I didn’t stay long. Before I left, though, I got a weird/cute souvenir from the Mori modern art museum that’s basically a cherry blossom park scene made from paper stencils that you punch out and stick together. 

After that I started the trek back to the hotel and took a break for a couple

Minochi-an exterior. Interior is on my flickr page.

of hours while I sorted through photos, then went for dinner at a soba (buckwheat noodles) place in my compound called Minochi-an. It was a nice, traditional looking place that didn’t have a single word in English (or even English characters) anywhere in the restaurant, so when the waiter came buy I just pointed at something that looked like the house special and said, “Kore, kudasai! (This please!)” and hoped for the best. It turned out to be a tray of soba noodles (cold) with onions, wasabi, and dipping sauce on the side, served with tempura. The noodles were good, as was the tempura, though there were a few pieces I didn’t recognize. One of them was literally just a fried leaf (I hope I didn’t eat something that was just for decoration >__<) and another was a piece of chewy fish that I REALLY had to sink my teeth into.

After that, I wandered home and took the long way so I could get some better shots of the sakura trees lit up at night. Got home, checked facebook, and went straight to sleep again.