Day 6: Roppangi Hills

Day 6.

Welcome to it. Let's hit the road.

And meet this thing. What the hell is this thing? Great question. But first, some answers you didn't ask for.

The plan for Day 6 was pretty ambitious. Mainly, leave the hotel and pinball around Tokyo until we landed in our evening activity, a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. Awesome. We decided to start in Roppangi to see what it looked like in the daylight, and then drift over to Roppangi Hills, a tiny section of Tokyo that had an incredibly interesting history.

In fact, here it is, from our pals at the Wikipedia.

"Constructed by building tycoon Minoru Mori, the mega-complex incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafés, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheater, and a few parks. The centerpiece is the 54-story Mori Tower. Mori's stated vision was to build an integrated development where high-rise inner-urban communities allow people to live, work, play, and shop in proximity to eliminate commuting time. He argued that this would increase leisure time, quality of life, and benefit Japan's national competitiveness. Seventeen years after the design's initial conception, the complex opened to the public on April 23,2003."

Couldn't have put it better myself. That's why it's in quotes.

The term "mega-complex" turned out to be unbelievably apt. In terms of combining all the occupational and social elements into one cohesive property, the structure is pretty stunning. The design of the place struck a cord with me as well. I could have sat and stared at the architecture for the major part of the day. Like I've said before, these people live in the future. Rarely it's frightening, often it's beautiful, and sometimes it's both. Let's have a look.

Taking a break during our walk from the Roppangi station to Mori Tower. Have I mentioned that Tokyo has the best public transit system in the world? It does. Sorry New York. Sorry Chicago. You are my homes and I love you, but Tokyo's transit system has got you coming and going. At least you have something to aspire to now.

Mori Tower. Fairly intimidating from this angle, I feel, even for a hard-bitten urbanite such as myself.

At the ground floor of the building. This Mori fellow may be onto something. I like him. Japan gets a man who wants to improve the city-dwelling experience with advanced urban planning. We get Donald Trump. Point - Japan.

Aaaaaaand then there's this thing.

Hello, handsome.

Carisa and I finally figured out what it was. This was a Mech-Spider, masquerading as a statue. If the Mori Tower was threatened in anyway, the Mech-Spider would come to life and lay cyber-eggs in the threat's brain.

Prove us wrong.

Entrance to the tower.

View from the stairs to the museum.

More stair-shots

Turned out the museum was closed. Boo hiss. After not buying anything in the gift shop, we had ourselves a bit of a walk-about.

Take every shopping mall you've ever been to. Now make it the nicest building you've ever been inside of. That's the shopping "district" of Roppangi Hills. The mind reels.

Gorgeous right? It was a place were you bought sandwiches and a watch. The place is designed so that you never have to leave. I don't know whether I would love living here or be driven completely insane.

Escalator to the Roppangi Hills metro station. The station itself is a giant glass atrium.

See? Told you.

Another angle. Channel 5 is TV Asahi, whose studio is housed in Mori Tower.

Back on the train. Our consistently on-time, incredibly clean train. Frightening and beautiful, folks.

To our next destination. That destination: Adventure!

And by adventure I mean Akihabara.

See you soon.