Odaiba Sunken Park

Two weeks ago the weather was stunning on a Saturday, so skipped the office and went exploring. I had never been over the Rainbow Bridge or to Odaiba, so I took a trip. Up close, the Rainbow Bridge is much less spectacular than afar. It pales in comparison to the bridges in the Bay Area -- Oakland and Golden Gate bridges.


I was inspired by my previous subway pass that had a picture of this park. It is a very old landfill park in the middle of the Tokyo bay. When Odaiba was built in the late Eighties, this park was reconnected. The foot of the Rainbow Bridge is no more than a few hundred metres from the park's edge.

Oddly built, it has the remnants of a military installation. The outside is walled like the imperial palace, but the inside is actually dug-out to create a sunken area. The bottom of the park must be nearly at water level. I don't know how the water is kept from flooding the center.

Regardless, it was a glorified dog run when I was visiting. Nearly every dog owner had a chihuahua or dachshund, and many had more than one. For all of this dog activity, they were very well-behaved.

Bank of China Building

As I was leaving our Hongkong building (Citigroup Tower) when on a recent business trip, the fog had rolled off the harbour. Neon lights on the side of the Bank of China building were alit. I took this photograph standing only feet away from the base.

Unlike most other giant buildings in Hongkong, this one has no restaurants or stores in the base. It is purely a corporate headquarters building. Not all floors are occupied by Bank of China. Many other large buildings have malls incorporated into their base.

Next to this building is another equally tall -- seventy stories. It is called the Cheung Kong building. Goldman Sachs leases the highest available floors in the building. Li Ka Shing (Hongkong richest man and majority stake owner in Cheung Kong properties) is rumored to own the top floor as a private residence.

Like the Bank of China building, it also has no retail space or restaurants. Local lore has it that he did not want people to begrduge him for being associated with the wrong brands. Thus, he forbid retail space from the building altogether. Regardless, as much as the Bank of China building is praised for its beauty and size on the Hongkong skyline, the Cheung Kong building is literally less than one hundred meters away. It is a boxy, glassy, reflective, and uninspiring structure. Regardless, numerous foreign corporations have their Asia headquarters and operations in this well-located building.

Azabu Juban Fresh Fish

One Saturday afternoon I was walking through my neighborhood to the subway station. Along the way I passed a local sushi bar. Outside was this motorised scooter with a delivery of fresh fish.

I don't know the type of fish... or whatever it is. I only know that is was uncovered -- completely exposed to the elements -- and no one was watching the bike. The delivery person was no where to be found. I stopped to take a few photos, and a pedestrian smirked as he walked by me.

The obsession with fresh fish continues in Tokyo.

Minato-ku Sunset

My father asked me the other day what the skyline in Tokyo looks like. The city is too large to have a single skyline. It is more like Los Angeles that has a separate skyline for each city in the surrounding county. There was a beautiful sunset this evening at the office, so I took a few photographs.

This is one part of the skyline for Minato-ku (港区). The word ku (区) means city or ward in Japanese, so Minato-ku, Minato City, or Minato Ward are fine. The other character, 港, mean harbour. Oddly, it is the second Chinese character for the city Hongkong. The first means fragrant. (No joke.)

Tokyo is an old place by Japanese standards. While the city was only formed completely in the 1940s, the area already had twenty three cities. These were combined to create a supercity along with western suburbs. Years later, tiny islands far to the south -- hundreds of miles -- were also added. The twenty-three kus of Tokyo has about eight million people, and the remaining metropolitan area contains about four million people. These central wards have a population density roughly half Manhattan (13,000/km2 vs. 25,000/km2).

In Tokyo, a forty story building is considered very tall. There are none with more than sixty. Most building are six to ten stories. With the exclusion of the temple in the foreground of this photograph, very little of Tokyo is open space. (I have written extensively about this in prior posts.) This, along with its scattered, poorly planned architecture, gives its a distinctively industrial feel. Few foreigners would come to Tokyo and declare it an architecturally beautiful city.

French Bob Dylan

I couldn't help but snap a picture of our French Bob Dylan look-a-like from the office. Apologies, Adrien.

Bart Cradles

Bart recently had twin boys: Kaleb and Joshua. Congratulations! They are happy and healthy.

I don't know which one he holds here, but the child is barely one month old.

Sashimi Log

Richard sometimes takes us to a delicious and very cheap izakaya in 本郷三丁目 (hongo-san-chome). This is a photograph of the sashimi "log" they serve. Sashimi is raw fish without rice. It is generally smeared with a small amount of wasabi (a hot green paste), and more rarely wrapped in a shiso leaf that has a mint-like flavor.

This is the only restaurant where I have been served abalone and raw rock shrimp as part of a standard sashimi set.

One question about the log: Do they have a storehouse of these logs spare in the back? (In Japan, the answer is: likely!) It is rather ornamental and is only, as I have seen, used to serve sashimi.

Bart Eats

Fuji-san (Mount Fuji)

One very clear day before Roy Huang left Tokyo office for New York he took this picture of Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) from our offices on the twenty-second floor. The building on the left is Roppongi Hills Tower.

Fuji-san is Japan's tallest mountain and generally revered by all Japanese. However, few natives ever climb it; this is generally reserved for tourists and foreigners. The hike is regarded as difficult and the surroundings unspectacular.

Fuji-san's primary beauty is its setting. Surrounded by no other substantial peaks, it stands alone on the horizon.

Bike Storage

The Japanese are serious about lots of things; fish and trains are two that come to mind. But they are also serious about bicycles. An outgrowth of the pre-war tradition bicycle riding in conjunction with the development of super cities, Japan has found a scaling problem with bicycles. While a bicycles are efficient and healthy by themselves, tens of thousands of business people riding to work can introduce storage issues.

This bike storage area is very close to my office in Toranomon. While I have not seen a sign designating it as such, I suspect this is a city owned property to facilitate the storage of bicycles. I have seen others that drawf this one.

When my father lived in the Netherlands (my birthplace) he used to ride a bicycle to the train station on his way to work. He explained once that he would ride very slowly to prevent sweating in his suit. This is much the same way that salarymen ride to work in Tokyo: slowly. The design of urban bicycles in Japan bears close resemblance to pre-war bicycles in the United States. There are purely functional for street riding and have no fancy breaking or gearing systems.

Oddly, like umbrellas (かさ), they are kosher for stealing. This generally angers the owner more than an umbrella but is considered a right of passage. I find Japanese are willing to admit they steal an occaisional umbrella but never a bicycle. Who then, may I ask, is stealing all the bicycles in Japan? I have also been told that repairing a bicycle is prohibitively expensive in Japan, such it is generally cheaper to replace the entire bicycle! This is sometimes true for something as simple as a new tire and tube.