Ro-Ro-Roppongi Hills!

The last day on our trip I actually separated from the group to go meet one of my friends that's been studying abroad here in Japan for a while. So while my friends went to Shinjuku to check out the sites from their favorite shows, I went to meet her in Roppongi. Getting there was an adventure, as instead of taking the normal JR Line I had to take the Tokyo Subway system. Just getting there started a running joke among us that the richer an area was, the nicer their train stations would be. Ikebukuro station, for instance, had no benches or waiting area for commuters. There weren't even any water fountains. When I passed through Roppongi and Ginza, though, there were benches aplenty! It was pretty different from the Keihan stations and Kansai JR stations we were used to, where there's always someplace to sit.

While we waited to head out, I asked the subway attendendant how to reach Roppongi, and she told me...but she told me much too high a fare and forgot to include transfers! I did make it to my stop, but only after changing trains twice. It's also interesting to note that the subways were actually nicer over all then the normal Osaka subway lines I've ridden. There's a lot more put into the display at the very least.
When I reached Roppongi the first thing I noticed was....just how rich it all was. It felt like I had just entered the Japanese version of Beverly Hills, and I really had.

Believe it or not, having a Cheech and Chong's is a sign of being rich.

There were tons of foreign places which meant, apart from being a hub for foreigners, it was a place where people with money were at. Because American food is regarded in the same way Americans regard sushi, the more there is in one place, the more money there generally is. It did mean, though, that I got to have Wendy's with bacon (real bacon!) on it for the first time in months. After I met up with my friend though (and got my mom something to add to her snowman collection at the Christmas store they had set up), I headed out to meet up with my group again in Shibuya, the publishing capital of Japan.

Hachiko: The dog that waited

Shibuya is famous for two reasons apart from that: the first is that it has the Hachiko Memorial set up for the dog that waited for his master until he died (his master had died from illness and taken the train out of Shibuya every morning; if your interested in the story Hachi: A Dog's Story is wrong but has the general idea behind it). The second is the Shibuya Scramble! It's a lot easier to see at night, but even during the day you can see hundreds of people cross about ten different crosswalks at the same time in the same place. You actually have to be really careful not to hit anyone as you do it.

After Shibuya it was time to head home, so we joined rush hour traffic (that resulted in us getting separated again) and headed to Tokyo station. From there it was just a brief walk to get to the night bus station and we were off. As for the night bus...it was actually one of the nicest buses you can get on and considering we paid about $20 it was a good deal. Unfortunately because it was a night bus I still only got about an hours worth of sleep (but made it to the second half of Space Odyssey 2001 before I fell asleep this time!).

See you in the next post!
~Zenko~