Shinjuku Kills Me: Skyscrapers
June Photo Challenge
(I’m on the road and have limited access to my photo library. I do, however, like to shoot cityscapes and building architecture and happen to have a few pics from Tokyo with me that can say what I want to say about this month’s theme, “skyscrapers – “ though in less detail than I’d otherwise like.)
I’ve written before that a circumnavigation of Shinjuku Station, in west-end Tokyo, provides an experience of the best (and the worst) of what Tokyo’s all about, high city and low.
I recently posted about an example of Shinjuku “high city:” the new Kabukicho Tower hotel and entertainment complex, which takes another firm step in gentrifying Asia’s largest blue-district, for better and worse.
But Kabukicho Tower and other more recent development in the area is really a satellite offshoot of the glass and steel bamboo grove of office, hotel, and other skyscrapers collectively – if rather colourlessly – known as Shinjuku’s Skyscraper District.
If you’ve ever been to Tokyo on a high-end business trip, or visited the observation deck, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office Buildings, you’ve been in the heart of this distinct neighborhood, chockablock with brutalist and other architectural angels and demons. With uncharacteristically wide streets and sidewalks.
In fact, The Metro Government Buildings offer one of the best free views of the city from their observation decks.
This is Tokyo megalopolis in its front-facing side: brutalist and international-style architecture that, truth be told, could be anywhere in the world. I think that’s the point: this is the business-class section of the city, designed to make frequent-flyer mile travelers and on-the-go office workers feel as at-home, or more likely in the office, than to offer up an international experience.
Not that all the buildings are designed to be like an airport waiting lounge. In fact, I enjoy wandering this neighborhood to shoot pictures day and night for its sense of alien, glass and steel charm and elevated walkways.
There are also buildings, such as the Mode Gakuen “college of fashion and beautician” campus, shaped remarkably like a combination between London’s “gherkin” tower and a Ghibli animation character.
Other skyscrapers populate the space above the city, looking at times like wharves and navigation beacons for alien spacecraft.
I would like to give a shout-out to a couple more posts from explorers of the upper reaches:
Again, sorry if the formatting is a little rough on this post: great as these iPads are for travel, they can’t beat a desktop for a work station :-)
