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Tokyo, Japan
I want to fly in your silver ship, let Jesus hang and Buddha sit
Welcome to Tokyo. One of the world's great cities, Tokyo is a massive, sprawling, seemingly (but not really) endless urban landscape of towers, trains, streets, signs, lights, lines, chaos, serenity (ok, not all that much serenity), all teeming with millions and millions of Japanese people scurrying about in just about every possible direction. Fun.
What the hell is that you ask? Why it's a great big shiny metal sphere, suspended in an erector set building of course. I would also have accepted "one of those buildings that could only work in Tokyo" as a correct answer.
Kenzo Tange's crazy ass Fuji TV Building all the way out in Odaiba is certainly memorable and surprisingly fun to visit. An admission ticket gets you up and inside the great big metal ball, where an observation level awaits with a view back towards Tokyo, although it's not really the best view when you come to think of it- Tokyo is far away and the building (and shiny metal sphere) isn't all that high. Really the reason you go out all that way is to see the building and not to see the view from the building, but that's something you probably knew before you even started your long trip out to Odaiba in the first place.
Kenzo Tange may be dead (he died a few years back), but his name is still alive, or more accurately his last name is still alive. Tange's son continues to work under the name Tange Associates and continues to build memorable buildings in Tokyo. Dead center in the back of this image is the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, one of those buildings that stops you in your tracks as you walk the block after block between Shinjuku and the other, far more famous Tange building (see the next page for more on that one).
Careful slideshow readers (hey- that might mean you) should notice that the name Mode Gakuen sounds a bit familiar. I could tell you exactly where you read those words already during this slideshow, but that would take all of the fun out of it.
My local rail station when I stayed in Japan, this is the Shimbashi JR Station, on the extraordinarily helpful and busy JR Yamanote Line, only a few stops down the line from Tokyo (Station). My first full day in Tokyo was the last day of my Japan Rail Pass, a great value that gets you on (almost) all of the intercity trains you want to be on (except for private rail lines and the Nozomi Shinkansen) and as an extra value, it also lets you travel the Yamanote Line that literally circles Tokyo, stopping just about all the places you really want to go to anyway.
On my last day of my Japan Rail Pass, I took a day trip (or more accurately a half day trip) out of Tokyo and on to Yokohama, a ride that wasn't all that far away (around a half hour or so), then hopped a subway and then walked five blocks to see this, Foreign Office Architects' much publicized Yokohama Passenger Terminal. And while some people go all the way out to the passenger terminal to catch a ride on a ship, I went all that way just to walk on the roof. The top of the building is a public park full of rising (and falling) boardwalk hills, canyons of angled stairs, lost patches of grass and views back to Yokohama that are so spectacular that even local brides take time out of their otherwise busy schedules to stop by.
Another view back of the pier, as the ground plane (or roof plane, depending on your perspective) rises, falls and rises again, with only a distant blow up Santa left to mark your way.
