北へTactical Deployment

Roppongi Hills is just a little north-east of Meguro. Perhaps more relevantly, it’s not far from Shibuya – an upmarket shopping district with a more refined and stylish touch. It also adjoins a commercial area with plenty of offices.

This is one of Ast's photos - security wouldn't let us past the lobby to find out just what The Pokemon Company does here

Ascending from the station we find ourselves entering a large cavernous atrium, surrounded by various shops, cafes and TV screens – it certainly does no harm for one’s image. Everything about the place exudes a sense of luxury and class – clean, spacious and well-lit.

You can see some of the oval-shaped roof near the top, I think it's about 30m in diameter, and this is the small building

Stepping out into daylight is a weird experience – it’s a wide open area, with grass, trees and park benches. It’s also pretty busy for a Tuesday. While Ast went off to find a toilet, I sat down and tried to see if I could snarf some wifi (unsuccessfully).

It's *that* kinda wanky establishment, they've wrapped all the trees up like presents.

Roppongi Hills was under attack by alien spiders at the time of this report. We apologise for any inconvenience caused-degozaimasu.

The most obvious feature is the 54-storey Mori tower, directly in front of the station exit. The lower half a dozen or so levels are for shopping, while the upper levels are mostly corporate office space. As seen in the top photo, there’s plenty of well-known companies with operations here. The shopping is a warren of tunnels and levels, attached in parts to a hotel, cinemas, and gardens. It’s not entirely different from some of the shinier Westfield complexes (like Bondi Junction), but with so much less horrible.

You can't tell from here, but this is an elaborate display sitting in a small water feature inside one of the shopping arcades

Winding our way up from the lower levels we arrive on a plateau overlooking a hillside to the east. It’s steep, and a series of stairways and walkways have been built into the hill. Were it a little more complex and cave-ish, it wouldn’t be out of place in Myst.

Think what you will of the smog over the city, I just can't get over the deep blue sky here.

From the hillside there’s a fair view out over the city. Tokyo Tower is pretty much directly to the east. Below us a decidedly western-style garden is well-maintained and enjoyed by families, couples and friends. A little to the south is a small theatre of sorts, where there’s a choral performance taking place.

Overlooking the garden from the east side of the hill. The TV Asahi building is visible on the right.

One of the more curious scenes we spotted. The dog (a greyhound with long hair?) looked thoroughly dazed and confused, while the kids were delighted to play with a very docile pet. Moments earlier its owner was feeding the dog potato wedges and watching TV on their phone.

TV Asahi’s headquarters are right next door, which were open for some sort of anniversary festivities by my guess. On display down one end was a series of stalls and boards for one of their more popular programs, 相棒 (Aibou, “partner” in the sense of camaraderie). It’s a cop action show, and it’s been popular enough to warrant several full seasons (then again, there’s Zero no Tsukaima too, right?).

You can tell what sort of cop-duo it'll be - the older and wiser detective, immacutely dressed and very intellectual, teamed with the younger, rasher, spur of the moment, not-quite-rookie-but-inexperienced cop.

That pretty much rounds out the day for us. We’ve plans to meet up with a local contact sometime, as well as make battle plans for comiket.

Roppongi may have the highest concentration of Little Dogs in all of Tokyo.

There was a machine in the tv asahi building that takes 10yen coins and stamps these little medallions for you. This is for V-san, he digs Doraemon.

So it’s like Moyashimon, but not as cute…

This one’s almost too easy, so it doesn’t deserve a planning entry. Today we’re heading to the Meguro Parasitological Museum. Don’t ask how we decided this, just blame the internet.

Meguro is one of the 23 city wards of Tokyo, roughly south-south-west of The Exciting Bits (where we’re staying). As a result, it’s well-serviced by JR and the Metro, so getting here is dead simple. As if that weren’t enough, the museum has a guide in English for visitors.

We weren’t in a great hurry, having left the hotel around 11:00. Once we got off the train around midday it was a pleasant walk down Meguro-dori to the museum. The sun is out and there’s a light breeze – you could be forgiven for thinking it was autumn. Being a Tuesday, it’s business as usual and there are plenty of people about. It’s definitely nowhere near as bustling as Tokyo-proper, but it’s still distinctly city-ish. As always, there’s evidence of construction works here and there.

The bridge over Meguro river, along Meguro-dori not far from the station.

The museum itself is a tall but unassuming six-storey building, a little way up the hill past Yamate-dori. While its biggest claim to fame is being the world’s only parasitological museum, they’re also a serious research centre. As well as having a large catalogue of specimens, they perform studies and produce publications. Photography inside is a bit challenging, so you’ll have to trust me that there’s two whole floors of squirm-inducing parasites on display there.

The first floor is mostly samples of varying sizes preserved in jars of formalin or under perspex. They vary in size from “barely visible” up to “golly that’s quite large”, but it all pales in comparison to what you’ll find upstairs – behold the 8.8 metre ribbon they keep there to give visitors a real idea of just how long the world’s longest tapeworm is (it’s hard to appreciate the scale of the folded and preserved one on the wall). Along with this you’ll find light-up maps of where you’ll find other parasites around Japan, and an oddball selection of goods in their gift-shop. If you venture off into the other attached rooms you can find the original writings from the dude who opened the museum in 1953, and pioneered a lot of work in the field.

The museum is government-assisted, but otherwise relies on donations (entry is free). Seeing as you’ve come all the way out here, it’d be nice to make a donation.

Decidedly pleased that we’d not eaten earlier, we started heading back towards the station. We’re not averse to the local food (except Ast, who might die if he eats too much seafood), but we’re too lazy to be adventurous, so we ended up getting something oily at Mosburger before visiting the Lawsons next door.

Across the intersection from Lawsons we spotted a shrine on the way past. As fans of miko-related pursuits, this was worth a visit. As if to prove its adaptability and relevance, the Ohtori shrine has a driveway and can accomodate cars, suitable for the urban setting. Also curious was that there was noone to be found. Do attendants get lunch breaks..?

Ohtori seemed to have a lot more gold than other shrines we've seen. The sign on the left with the red stripe tells whether you'll have a lucky or an unlucky year, based on your birth-year.

An omikuji (fortune) vending machine - that'd explain why there's noone here. As Ast notes, miko robots are only a matter of time.

It’s a tranquil place, and we could have happily sat around relaxing for a while, but we had places to be. Next stop, Roppongi Hills.

Although cold and damp, the same could not be said for out enthusiasm to attend a screening of the latest Kara no Kyoukai film, just as we’d managed last year. They’re up to episode six now, the penultimate instalment (though not penultimate in the chronology of the story).

This episode, Oblivion Recorder (忘却録音 / Boukyaku Rokuon), brings Mikiya’s younger sister, Azaka, to the spotlight as a first-class character, and she’s a joy to behold with her fiery personality. Even with my very limited grasp of Japanese it wasn’t too hard to get a hold on the plot, and it piles on the imouto fanservice, so I can only commend ufotable on a job well done.

Getting to Teatoru Shinjuku

We got lost a couple of times. It’s not necessarily hard to get to, but it’s easy to mess up if you don’t know the streets or don’t have a map. Assuming you get to Shinjuku station, there’s plenty of options for getting there.

This is the place. It's the building with the giant enemy crab on the side, several storeys up.

• If you head well north of the station, following the train lines, you’ll get to the border of Kabukichou. There’s a Prince Hotel just north of the big intersection with Yasukuni-dori. This is great, because you can just head east down Yasukuni-dori and the theatre is on your right. You’ll know you’re getting very close when you pass the Isetan Mens building (a department store). Downside: this is a long way to go for you slackers, it’s just under 500m from the Prince Hotel to the theatre. You need the exercise anyway.
• You might come out the East-South Exit near a multitude of Lumine buildings (another department store). Head east until you get to the really big intersection with Meiji-dori, turn left onto Meiji, then keep going until you reach the big intersection with Yasukuni-dori. Turn left, and it’s on your left. Once again, look out for the giant enemy crab. This is about 600m from the East-South Exit, but you don’t have to get to the Prince Hotel first.
• Wing it. Not advisable unless you have a map, GPS, or plenty of time on your hands. It’s right near the intersection of Yasukuni and Meiji, so at least you can ask the locals.

Being what it is, there was a small shop in the theatre selling merchandise for the film, so I settled on a poster. At a thousand yen, it cost as much as the ticket for the film itself – fantastic value.

It's an indie cinema with only one screen, so I suspect 1000yen is cheaper than what you'd pay at a mainstream place. Last session for the night \o/

The print quality was pretty good, and it's nice heavy, glossy paper. It's also huge.

Lots of yuri! The flowers are nice too (you had it coming, shut up). Touko-sensei in school uniform! ハァハァ～

Our room at Sakura Hotel is nicely positioned around the fourth floor. You’ve probably seen buildings with chamfered balconies in anime (eg. Misato’s apartment in Eva), ours is one of those. I believe it’s to get more light into the building, which is necessary given the usual height and density of most buildings. The bunk-bed is in the full-height section of the room (which has a pretty high ceiling anyway), so we just use the opposite wall for out suitcases and other junk.

The windows (facing out at a 45-degree angle) have these fantastic light-blocking blinds. With them closed you could easily be forgiven for thinking it’s the wee hours of the morning when you wake up. It’s on account of these that we wake up around 11:00. Without any real plan we head over to Ginza.

The Sony store is there, along with a bunch of other upmarket brands. Visiting the Sony store makes me want to forgive them, for everything. It reminds me of a time when Sony weren’t evil. This roughly corresponds to when they used to have a showroom near my highschool…

These promise fantastic sound quality through a "Personal listening field" - for just shy of 35,000 yen I'd hope so. The downside? Jamming little metal loops in your ears.

The Sony store spans multiple levels, and makes it easy to lose yourself and forget which level you’re on, through creative use of stylish staircases and mezzanines. The first floor is all about personal audio.

Kinda wish I had an armband for my ipod, but it's a wee bit too heavy for arm-mounting. Now if I had a thigh holster...

As you can see below they have some serious hardware too. The Japanese have some sort of fetish for LPCM (see also: DVDs), maybe they’re just adamant on getting the best quality and to hell with the downsides. I just can’t think of a need for studio-ish standards for recording when you wouldn’t just use real studio gear. I’d hardly be waving one of these in a politician’s face as a journalist.

The one on the right is more than three times the price of its neighbour, I hope the mics and ADCs are that much better. It sure as hell isn't more linear.

I'm seeing some distinct design cues here from Apple. Not the last of them we'll see either.

Moving upstairs, we’re into the realm of cameras and phones proper. Some very slick stuff here, but it’s familiar territory – the “really crazy Japanese phones” with features up the wazoo tend to be sold under carrier brands, so you don’t see them as much here.

It's so tiny! Nanoha (my z610i) is about 25% longer, but I prefer the clamshell style more, so I don't feel too bad.

And on to cameras. There’s a fair lineup of point-and-shoots, along with the serious DSLRs. These are interesting because Sony aren’t trying to bootstrap themselves out of nothing – they picked up the Minolta brand a few years ago, giving them some cachet to capitalise on, which they’ve done with the alpha (α) series. My acquaintance icie, a Sony owner, seems generally happy aside from some niggles I detect in his comments.

The model Ast bought for last year's trip has had a refresh, sporting a slightly slimmer profile, smoother edges, and a bigger screen.

Now with chic little carrycases. Gone are the days of ugly polyester pouches and velcro strips! If there's one thing Sony does well, it's making products that you just want to buy on appearance alone.

Along with the usual security cords and cameras, a friendly sales assistant was on hand to keep an eye on things. That’s one thing I prefer about Japan, people are never in your face trying to sell you stuff, they’ll just happily sit back and wait for you.

The α900 is Sony's flagship model, and the display just begs you to pick it up and shoot stuff. Beautiful detail on that flower bouquet? Hell yes. Please.

One thing that really struck me about the Sony DSLRs was the sound the shutter and mirror makes. It’s chunky; serious business. Even if you’re just waving it around and pushing the button, it’s like firing a mounted machine gun, at five frames a second (let’s all agree that we’ve played some video games, and you know what I’m talking about). I like the subtlety of my D40, but the shutter sounds anaemic. I think this matters some if you’re a guy, you’ve got an e-peen to worry about.

I wasn't really paying attention, it took me a while to realise this wasn't an imac. Mmm, design cues.

Moving up to the top level, they’ve got home entertainment and gaming. Plenty to like here, and I got my first taste of Little Big Planet. Easy to mess around with, and you needn’t speak a word of Japanese to enjoy it.

This is one of their more curious products that I don't think we'll see in the Real World (nevermind the "Overseas models" markings). It's a little music player that rolls around and flashes lights while it plays music. It's actually pretty cute and addictive to watch.

Known as Eternal Sonata to the rest of the world, presumably because "Trusty Bell" would be too hard for stupid gaijin foreigners to get their dense heads around. You can play as Chopin. Seriously.

It's not evident here, but the TV's display panel is mind-bogglingly thin (they quote 3mm), and the image looks great.

Ginza is a very upmarket shopping district. Right across the alleyway from the Sony building is Hermes’ building. It’s huge! Just to rub it in, the entire facade is constructed from glass bricks.

I'm no architect, but I'm sure my ex could confirm my suspicions that the structural integrity is all internal.

Regular window displays would be out of place and ugly. This was cool and elegant.

Sony Street - yo ass belongs to Us now. Check out those funky streetlights in the background, too.

This colourful florist's display really brightened our day. The overcast sky threatened rain at any minute, but we managed to evade it for a while yet.

The Hermes building has this big… “installation” right over their main entrance, it’s like a large-scale child’s mobile that you’d hang in a bedroom.

You can't tell from the photo, but those vanes are actually spinning freely. It was a little bit surreal, like an urban wind turbine.

Into the sky. From this angle they look to me like strange quadriped aliens, climbing down the side of the building.

Ginza has it's fair share of interesting architecture, which is nice. I personally don't much mind "ugly" buildings, so long as they're *interesting*. My youngest brother is down with all the top-end brands, he'd love this place.

We weren’t really game to go into any of the high-end stores, so we settled on some lunch instead. It was blowing a gale on top of being cold, so we stopped in at the first noodle joint we could find in an alleyway. It’s strangely reassuring to find that you don’t get gouged exorbitant prices for food just because you’re in the ritzy part of town. It was a modest place with room for maybe a dozen customers, and our meals cost several hundred yen each, which is about standard. It’s hard not to think at the time, “but the exchange rate is about 60 yen to the AUD” – you learn to suppress that soon enough.

There was a Nikon store not far from the main drag in Ginza. I was really keen on the 18-200mm (which has had many mixed reviews), but the price just didn't stack up against buying it back home.

From Ginza we travelled on to Shibuya, which while still expensive and up-market, is a bit “younger” and trendier. We missed out last time, so what we’re really here for is the 109 building and The Crossing. These are featured pretty prominently in CHAOS;HEAD (Nitro+ game and anime).

B'z are a wildly popular rock duo. There's all sorts of interesting stuff like this around Shibuya station.

Hachikou is something of a national symbol of loyalty for the Japanese. He waited patiently at Shibuya station for his master to return, every day for a decade, after his master's unfortunate demise. The Hachikou statue is now a popular meeting place.

The Crossing. Traffic stops in all directions for pedestrians to cross however they damn well please. The closest Sydney has to this is on George street next to the QVB, but it's lame in comparison.

You can see the 109 building on the left in the photo above, a terrible pun on the owners’ name (”Tokyu” sounds like “ten”-”nine”). It’s suitably decorated for christmas. Those of you less inclined towards mousou than us probably know it from TWEWY and various other games. More normal people might recognise its appearance in Lost In Translation (2003 film).

As well as being a youth hotspot, it gets its fair share of weirdos and nuisances by virtue of having lots of people around. While we were there, there was a large van parked near the crossing with four big speaker horns blaring out something or other about god and/or jesus.

Don't look too hard because the photo is blurry, but this place is called Purikura Mecca. Enough said. One of many stores inside 109.

Aww yeah, baby! Hello Kitty just got pimped out!

Night falls early in the middle of winter, ridiculously so. The weather wasn’t helping, but it was barely past 17:00 and already it was quite dark. Clouds had definitely set in, and it was drizzling rain. With no further business in Shibuya, we pressed northwards to Shinjuku. Shinjuku has the Tokyo Metropolitan Govt. Building, a grand bastion of bureaucracy for the city, which we were keen on seeing. While it’s not particularly noteworthy (though it’s pretty tall at 243m), it’s pretty important. I suspect it may one day supplant Tokyo Tower as a manga trope (eg. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles).

Sounds boring? Well, yeah. The sixth instalment of Kara no Kyoukai is playing, so we need to swing by the Shinjuku theatre and check out their screening times.

We passed this curious structure on the way, it turns out it's the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, an educational facility.

Remember what I said about interesting buildings earlier? It was hard to make out under the cover of darkness, wind and rain, but even from a distance I could tell that this was something worth looking at. and it stayed in my view all the time we walked from Shibuya to Shinjuku. I don’t really give a damn if you think it’s ugly, lacks elegance, is misproportioned, or whatever. It’s an interesting building. The Cocoon Tower schools n00bs in Fashion, Tech, and Med. It was apparently only finished in October, so they probably hadn’t even taken all the shrinkwrapping off yet.

Mmm, converging verticals. From the ground you can make out where the tower splits into two at the 33rd floor.

It’s just past 17:30 by now, and the rain is well and truly coming down. It’s dark, it’s damp, and by golly we’re cold – far from ideal shooting conditions. I can shoot okay in my thick leather gloves, but the camera is struggling to bag enough photons, firing with the lens wide open and pushing the ISO to 1600 (that’s one stop below the D40’s “excrement overdrive” setting).

The Met. building is faced by a courtyard of sorts across the road, with covered walkways and whatnot, which is a welcome respite from the rain while we try to keep things dry and warm ourselves up.

That sweet-ass flare? Just as planned.

This curved building is on the far side of the "courtyard" facing the Met. building. It's shaped a bit like a parabola, presumably to focus the massive defence-lasers that are deployed from the main building in the event of an attack.

The building is apparently open for tourist-y purposes, but we’re really not in the mood by this time, even if it’s true. Luckily for us, they built a series of underground moving walkways to expedite the journey for the numerous bureaucrats that work here. A little while later we’re at the Metro station and on our way to Teatoru Shinjuku.

For a change, we’re travelling via Cairns airport this time. This seems silly, but at the same time I look forward to spending less contiguous time in the air. Cairns, with it’s modest population, manages to have an international airport, due in no small part to its rich natural tourist attractions.

There’s no good way to do this; we’ve packed and dressed for an arrival in Tokyo where the temperature will be in the single digits, but it’s probably over 30 degrees in Cairns. Getting off the domestic flight, we grab our stuff and walk across to the international terminal. It’s not as big a trek as it would be at Sydney airport, but it’s far from comfortable.

To our dismay there’s absolutely nothing to do at Cairns airport. Internet access is non-existent, and there’s not even any shops to browse. I guess it’s all business here (unlike Sydney, which is trying to push itself as a shopping destination of all things).

The weather in Tokyo is a bit rough and the landing is easily the most riveting part of the flight. Far be it from me to wish for misfortune, but there’s an exhilarating tension in the air as the plane is buffeted by crosswinds, wingtips shaking wildly. The din of the engines crescendos to a roar as it’s joined by the reverse thrust, then accompanied by rubber on tarmac.

Getting to Tokyo-proper is a bit of an exercise due to us not having active rail passes yet; we have to actually pay our way there, so we opt for the slower, cheaper routing to Jinbouchou.

Sakura Hotel is a nice change from Tokyo IH where we stayed last time. It’s less rigid and is open 24/7 – a nice bonus given the odd hours that we expect to be around. It’s not right above the train station and two stations away from Akiba, but we should be able to walk there anyway, at least according to the map. Sakura also has free wifi; massive win right there.

I did in the end change all my money to yen before leaving Australia. The overall trend for the Aussie dollar has been downwards, so I wasn’t too keen on risking things further by delaying. The gain would be small at best anyway.

One of the bosses at work had been to Japan recently to attend a wedding, and on the last day of work he slipped me a 1000yen note he had left over, as a sort of christmas present (right after hurling a small, foam soccerball at my head a moment earlier, mind you). We joked about how I’d be able to buy a can of coke with it, but the truth is it’s pretty substantial; that’s at least a couple of run-ins with UFO catchers in Akiba, or a bunch of drinks at train stations. Really can’t complain.

• 1,740 AUD -> 108,000 JPY
• 800 AUD -> 45,000 JPY
• 1000 AUD -> 59,000 JPY
• 1600 AUD -> 90,000 JPY

Walking around with the equivalent of five-thousand dollars in cash is a heady experience; the temptation to blow it all at a moment’s notice is hard to resist.