Tokyo Tower

This year, in returning to the Tokyo Tower, we asked our students to think less about the view--amazing as it is--than about the "Tower experience," which is integrated in a series of Tokyo Tower products, two official mascots, costumes for the workers, and four or five layers of shops and activities as one exits the tower. What trip could be complete, for example, without a special pork sandwich, made especially for the Tower?

We did want them to think about how the Tower is used to orient one's sense of urban space though. The tower, which is almost a duplicate of the Eiffel Tower, was built in the 1950s as a crucial monument to Japan's reintegration into the global community...and to show that Japan could do the same things as European countries, perhaps a bit better. (The Tower is therefore 8 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower.)
Despite the imitation of its French counterpart, the Tokyo Tower doesn't work in the same way, partly because there are no building ordinances keeping other buildings smaller. This is really apparent looking at the Tower from the mid-level observation deck of Roppongi's Moti Building, from which the TT looks almost like a small toy. By contrast, the Roppongi highrise (two pictures above), viewed from the TT, looks like a counterpart to the Tower, maybe as tall, but not significantly bigger. It's this odd kind of optical illusion--that makes where one is seem like a center, compared to where one isn't--that helps one locate oneself in the city.
There is also the odd phenomenon of feeling like one is in a separate city in the sky, which is most concretely experienced in the transparent floor windows. The little girl above was not fazed by this at all, but I found the downward line of sight disorienting.

Shimbashi Cuisine

While at Shimbashi, searching for an observation deck, I found myself on the top floors of the Carreta Dentsu Building (Dentsu is the huge advertising agency in Tokyo), where there were several "Restaurants in the Air" serving lunch. I had an amazing five course, traditional Japanese meal, starting with the salad above. If you look closely, you'll see that the white strands, which at first look like shredded radish or cabbage, have eyes.

Then this amazing crab cake and miniature shrimp tempura, with a thick seaweed sauce.

The main course was a sashimi mix, including the roe, above, and the beautiful plate of fish below.
And for desert, this beautiful black-sesame egg custard square, garnished with strawberry, cream, and mint.
The courses came slowly and were all layed out on the same ebony tray, which was (to my great shame) wiped clean after each course as well. It was a slow meal, which was great, as I was looking out over the Sumida River, Tsukiji fish market, the old detached Imperial Gardens, and Odaiba. The presentation seemed focused on angles and curves, accentuation of the food's colors, and a sequence of textures (rice and fish served from wood, roe and custard served from porcelain, soy soup served in metal, salad in earthenware)

Empty and Full: Shimbashi

Shimbashi is a district between here and Tsukiji, and has really been developed in the past decade into a zone of monstrous skyscrapers. At the center is a large complex called "Shiodome," connecting about a dozen giant buildings through a maze of underground tunnels and at least three different train stations. We came here once last year for the Advertising Museum, and got incredibly lost, and I wanted to explore this area more before coming back. Of course I got lost numerous times, and maps like the one above (which seems like a map for a small country) did not provide all that much help. The few times I asked people for directions, I was told that even people working in the Shiodome found it hard to navigate.

I was determined to get to an observation deck on one of these buildings, and finally found an information counter. I figured if I could find out which skyscraper had a deck, I'd just go outside and walk toward it, but I was told to go underground and wander the labyrinth.
And this was the strangest part about wandering in this area. There are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people working here, and passing through the stations, and yet there are also these large amazingly empty spaces, like the corridor above, or the huge stairway below, or below that, the underground pavilion connecting different stations. This phenomenon is exaggerated in a place like the Shiodome, but is nonetheless true for much of Tokyo--that there will be moments and spots of incredible crowding and massive numbers of people, and then areas that--in the middle of a Tuesday--are bizarrely empty.

Tsukiji Fish Market

Since the Tsukiji Fish Market is the biggest fish market in the world, it's not surprising that it needs its own traffic police, complete with rubber boots, to keep the ice- and fish-haulers moving. We arrived there on Monday morning at about 6:45 to give our students one of the most visually stimulating experiences in Tokyo. To even call this a "market" is misleading, as it's a huge district on the waterfront, complete with its own subdistricts: one for restaurant supplies, one for sushi restaurants, one for ice production and sale, one for vehicles, and so on.

Much of it is indoors, with large warehouse avenues full of busy traffic (trucks, handcarts, small lawn-mower-like flatbeds like in the picture above, motorcycles, mopeds, and bicycles). Last year I mostly stayed in the areas where seafood was being prepared, and I did park myself near this butcher (below) who was mostly working on squid and octopus. But I had time to explore some of the other areas, before getting the most amazing and fresh meal of sushi...a huge plate for breakfast, for 1200 yen.


Yesterday, exploring Shimbashi (I will post on this later), I found myself in a highrise overlooking the fish market, which you can see in the curved, concentric warehouses below. Essentially everything in this picture (taken from a 46th floor) is the market.

Back in Tokyo

We are back in Tokyo, and in many respects it feels very familiar and comfortable this year: I know my way around on public transportation and where we're living, and the daily or even hourly experience of confusion is much diminished this year. But we've been traveling around the city quite a bit already so our students can learn the basics of the train lines, the city geography, and the special etiquette of being amidst thousands of people. And in just these four days of travel, I am amazed as I physically and mentally recall that amazing feeling of sensory overload and exhaustion.

[Hotdog stand mascot at Narita Airport.]

We all made it into the country with no problems, though the quarantine is quite strict. Crews of twenty or so, in surgical gowns, masks, and gloves, board the plane, scanning all passengers with a heat detecting camera for elevated temperatures. One poor soul two rows behind me had a fever, and forty or so of us were kept on the airplane as a result. She was given a physical and questioned, and after half an hour, officials determined she was not carrying the swine flu. But Saturday, when the students arrived, officials found the first case of the swine flu (three Japanese nationals returning from Canada), and forty people from their flight are in quarantine somewhere for ten days.[Roses in Yoyogi Park]

For their first full day in Japan, we took our students out to the Harajuku district, to keep them on their feet for the day. It was surprisingly hot and astonishingly crowded, but we visited Harajuku bridge, the adjacent Yoyogi Park (with its beautiful rose gardens), the Watari-um museum (to see some photographic work of Rei Sato, who is affiliated with Murakami's KaiKaiKiki Factory), and Shibuya (to get art supplies and walk one of the busiest intersections in the world).

I'm still figuring out what I will write about this year. I'm interested in the constant array of maps that one finds around the city, in different styles and designs (and often inaccuracies), like the map above of the Yoyogi park.
[Harajuku cat girl]

I also want to visit some different areas of the city to look at public spaces and movement. It's a treat to return to familiar sites, but there are so many districts of the city I haven't even passed through, so one challenge will be to find the time to see some of the new things. In the meantime, I still have to adjust to jet lag and Tokyo exhaustion, as I now feel something like this clock:
[Clock sculpture in the Ginza shpping district]