December 14, 2010

My trip is almost nearing an end and I have yet to visit so many places that I truly want to visit…times like this I wish I was spoiled. But a poor kid can have his trips too, and mine was to Roppongi Hills. With a cheap train fare of about 10 dollars and about 15-20 dollars for meals I had a great day for fewer than 50 dollars! What a bargain! Although my friends that took me did get me a going away gift for an observation tower or something–which was quite amazing to be frank–so that was like a 30 dollar gift right there, but onto my actual trip.

I rode some trains.

I arrived at Roppongi, which I find to be a symbolic city. I don’t know if this was on purpose or not, but Roppongi has an upper section which is literally higher than the lower section. The upper area is known as Roppongi Hills and is so much better kept, pretty to look at, and has a whole bunch of stores and restaurants, where as the bottom area has clubs and some restaurants. There probably is a history to all of it, but I never bothered looking it up. Anyway, the first place we went was the observatory tower, which was absolutely awesome. According to my friend it was the tallest place you could go near Tokyo, you could even see the Tokyo Tower from it. The actual tower had two observing spots: one was inside and the other was outside on the roof. The inside was quite crowded and they had a lot of Christmas lights so the reflections and massive amounts of people made sight-seeing from the windows rather difficult.

For an example, here is a picture from the inside.

The roof was far better.  Unfortunately because it was December it was quite cold up there so the enjoyment was slightly hindered by my freezing hands. The roof was huge though, and even had a helipad. I was really upset that my actual camera broke because I wanted to take so many nice pictures up there, but that machine broke on me last week, so I had to use my 5.0mp cell camera.

Here are some pictures from the rooftop.

The second place we went was to some sort of light show that they only have displayed during the holidays. The pictures really do not do it justice; it was more of a sight if you were actually there. They had these thin wire lines that made it look like shooting starts were flying everywhere. They also had this fog machine that would shoot out smoke while the lights under it would fade in and out different colors so the smoke changes colors as well, it was really cool.

Here are some pictures of the lights.

Location: Japan