Further afield

Monday was Japanese Labor Day, so I took the opportunity to try out the subway system a day early so that I wouldn't do my aimless wandering trying to find my station during commute times.  I also needed to find a store that sold wrapping paper or gift bags so I could prepare the small presents I'd picked up in duty free for my co-workers.  I got directions from the front desk of our apartment on how to get to the subway station and set off, emboldened by my inability to get lost the day before.

The subway entrances are all clearly marked, so finding that wasn't a problem.  I was slightly stymied in my first attempt to get a PasMo card (rechargeable subway/rail ticket), thinking I had misunderstood the limited English signage, but it turns out that the machine I chose was just out of the actual cards at that moment.  160円 later and I was in Shibuya.  Blind luck had led me to get on the train at exactly the right spot, so when I exited there was a stationary store directly in front of me so I got the gift bag purchases out of the way with no hassle.

From there, I just picked one of the many, many exits from the station and once again was rewarded with blind, stupid luck, coming out to look directly at the Cerulean Tower standing in the distance.  I climbed one of the pedestrian overpasses to head towards the office, but had to stop to take some video of the intersection.

Yeah, once again, I'm not sure why I am so fascinated by Japanese intersections.  After hanging out on the overpass for a bit like some kind of weirdo, I walked up to the office.

This is the side of the building that the lunch room and the bathrooms look out from, the bathrooms having actually a pretty nice view that you unfortunately can't enjoy at the same time as the heated toilet seats, at least not with any social discretion.

Having accomplished all of my immediate needs (gift wrapping, making myself feel better by preparing to avoid getting completely lost on the way to my first day of work), I just wandered around Shibuya for a while.

This is the famous Shibuya crossing from basically every American film set in Japan.  I've been shooting all of these videos on the little flip video camera I won at the last poker tournament in Sydney, which makes for handy footage, if not slightly less impressive than you would see in a real movie.  The crossing is actually really impressive in person, even though there were hardly anywhere near as many people in it than there are on a busy day.

Pac Man guards the entrance to an alley featuring what appears to be a gentlemens club, judging by the signage.  I did not go in to investigate ... it was too early in the day and they looked closed.

The little pink building on the left side of the street is only about 3m wide and contains a condom shop, two or three clothing vendors selling different types of crap, and a Brazilian tattoo parlor on the top floor.  Across the street is a pachinko parlor with the requisite hawker outside yelling about loose slots, etc.

I was starting to get hungry at this point, but instead of eating some place in Shibuya, I decided to take the subway back out to Ueno, where I had spent a large portion of my time on my last visit to Japan a decade+ ago.  Ueno is home to tons of motorcycle dealers, some of them operating out of a storefront so small they basically have a desk and nothing else, with all of their bikes parked on the sidewalk out front.  I ended up heading to a sushi bar that I had eaten in last time I was here and enjoyed my first real Japanese meal in a Japanese restaurant since I arrived.