Tokyo - day 2 - Shibuya
Today we actually wanted to leave home early but did not really succeed - we left around 2PM. Destination: Shibuya.
The city of Tokyo (meaning: East Capital) consists of “wards” - those are, in fact, separate cities with their own mayor and history, all joined into the Tokyo metropolis. Shibuya is one such ward, Shinjuku (yesterday) is another one.
First, we scored some breakfast at 7-11 before visiting the café just in case they wouldn’t serve breakfast at 2. They did serve a delicious coffee though, which we gratefully consumed and proceeded to the subway station.
This time, the journey included changing a subway line which we accomplished, and we even exited the subway station exactly near the famous Shibuya Crossing! That crossing has a zebra-pedestrian-path in a square, but also a giant diagonal path. The funny thing is, all pedestrians get green light (incidentally, called “blue” in Japanese) at the same time, so it’s quite a sight when it’s busy! Still, there is no chaos, people move assertively and somehow avoid bumping into each other.
In general, my impression after 2 days is: yes, it’s busy, but you somehow don’t feel it all that much - everything is organized, people don’t crowd the bus but patiently wait in line, nobody is yelling. Very unusual but reassuring atmosphere.
Our next stop was a strange disco-karaoke-halloween bar on the top floor of the “Magnet” building overlooking the crossing. We took some “must-have” tourist pics there.
After leaving our overlook, the sun started setting quickly and that signaled the city to wake up. Shibuya is definitely a night city, with lots of lights, 24 hours shops, bars and restaurants that are filling up with office workers celebrating yet another finished day. To our amazement, there were no traffic jams (nor claxon sounds) at all in the heart of Shibuya - traffic glided slowly but surely past, politely waiting for its turn between the waves of pedestrians.
Endless forest of vending machines
We did an evening stroll along Shibuya’s shopping district and visited some must-sees such as Nintendo shop (with all the Zelda merchandise!) and Jump store, a forest of hundreds (no kidding!) vending machines where you can buy a keychain with an animal, anime figure, plate of food (I got a salad!) and whatever you can imagine, and more. We also passed Mega Don Quixote (24x7 huge department store).
