Page 10 of 10
Tokyo, Japan
Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me, but you won't let those robots eat me
The slideshow wraps up with some final Tokyo pictures, including one of what Tokyo looks like, or more accurately what Tokyo looks like from 54 stories above the city. This is the picture postcard view of the Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower knockoff that is probably most famous for being destroyed by giant, generally fictionalized film monsters. If Mothra fought Godzilla, chances are that one of them would be taking down that tower. If I was a giant, generally fictionalized film monster, taking that down would likely be a priority for me as well.
The view across the city also gives you a fairly good idea of what makes Tokyo so interesting. Tall buildings, Blade Runner blimps, Eiffel Tower knockoffs, mid scale towers and a surprising amount of fairly small low scale buildings all seem to cohabitate and (more importantly) seem to feed off of each other when you get down to street level. A different type of energy at a very high level of density, especially when compared to other cities of comparable size and reputation.
A feel for what street level can be like. Japanese businessmen in dark suits mix with women wearing surgical masks (something that is still popular in Japan), all on a side street with no sidewalks and vertical lit signage which always seems brighter and denser just a few more blocks down the street.
In my lifetime I have (literally) traveled around the world and stayed at many different types of hotels, from a creaky hostel filled with Scottish bikers in Carcassonne, to a trailer at a roadhouse a few hours out of Alice Springs, to a lizard infested bed and breakfast on Kauai where the shower was open to the garden and where the gardener always seemed to walk on by every time I used it. One of the regrets I harbor as I grow older is that my tolerance for awful hotels (like those three just mentioned) seems to grow less and less. Hotels that were once perfectly acceptable I now find unthinkable. A real shame when you start to think about it.
My time in Tokyo was spent at a hotel that was free for me but otherwise was easily the most expensive hotel that I have ever stayed at (take that overpriced Moscow hotel from 2006). I used my Hilton diamond level status and a special promotion to get a free upgraded room at the Conrad Tokyo Hotel, a room I never would have paid for myself but one that I really ended up appreciating. From the "Lost in Translation" guest rooms (complete with every imaginable luxury including a free rubber ducky) to the "Inception" corridors (which did not noticeably spin) to the lobby lounge (where I had the best chai tea of my life), it was a consistently enjoyable experience that almost seemed worth the $700 a night that I didn't have to pay.
Quack!
An iPhone AutoStitch(ed) blurry view of life on the blurry Yamanote Line, the easy to use loop that hits most of the places that you want to be in the city. My hotel was at Shiodome, only about a ten minute walk to Ginza or a five minute walk to the Yamanote, Asakusa or Ginza Lines at Shimbashi Station or even less to Shiodome Station on the Oedo Line. And while I tried to avoid the well known overcrowding hell that can occur on a Japanese subway line at rush hour, I always managed to need to ride some train or other right at the worst time, when the trains are packed and everyone (but me) seems to know where they're going.
On the train out of Tokyo Station back to Narita, far east of the city center but easily still within the city itself, is the still under construction Tokyo Sky Tree, a communication tower with an observation deck that claims to be the world's tallest. At 100 feet higher than Toronto's really, really high CN Tower that seems impressive, but even at that it will be a good 800 feet lower than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, something which seems to call their world's tallest claim into question. Still the Mothras and Godzillas and giant, generally fictionalized film monsters of the future will need something new and current to needlessly knock to the ground, so at least the city planners of Tokyo are thinking ahead.
One very last picture, as the sun sets over the electric city and the horizon remains unbroken with the lone exception of an all too distant (and all too perfect) Mount Fuji.
