Tokyo: Ginza

11:01.26 - Monday 29th September 2008   (Link to This Entry)

It was never going to be a case of 'Rain Stopped Play' here in Tokyo, since the city doesn't stop for anything and we pretty much thought the same, but the constant light rain from Typhoon Jangmi cast a shadow over the whole day as we trekked around the streets of Ginza - Tokyo's leading shopping area.

The architecture around Ginza is mainly towering skyscrapers. You could argue that much the same can be said for most of Tokyo, but here they're much newer and more modern, with glass-fenced courtyards, subterrainian shopping areas and more. Many major corporations have their own towers and the overall effect can be sterile and futuristic.

Our intention was to hit the Sony building and find the Godzilla statue, but my bearings were off and neither of us thought to check the maps we had for directions so we ended up stumbling around Ginza an hour before anything opened. We passed the 6-story (ish) Toy Park store and made a mental note to visit it later, but promptly forgot how to get back to it. Disaster!

Never mind, the Sony building housed a great collection of current and future products, everything from camcorders to MP3 and Blu-Ray players. Despite being decidedly anti-Sony (I dislike their habit of introducing unnecessary proprietary formats) I could not help being impressed with the quality of some of the latest models and the set pieces.

After an hour of wishing for fatter wallets, we eventually went back out into the rain and made our way North West towards the Godzilla statue. Mighty Godzilla stood tall and proud (all 4ft of him) for our photos and we celebrated our pilgrimage at the nearby Starbucks.

On the way back we stopped off at a Pachinko parlour where K dutifully sacrificed a few hundred Yen to the God of Gamblers, then is was a brief train ride back to Shinagawa and our hotel. Sadly the rain has continued all day, so we're hoping for better weather tomorrow.