It's a Saturday and I meet Karen again for a tour. Karen likes to shop, so our interests don't significantly overlap in this area of life. Our first stop is Roppongi, which, when the Sun is up, appears to cast away the sins of the night and reform the cityette into a sparkling haven of gross commercial indulgence. This is some carefully constructed nightmare collision of a future Paris and space station terminal. HUGE malls are infested with continental stores, selling hyper expensive chocolate and luxury Italian ice cream. I'm not hungry for food, or this kind of sight seeing. we quickly and quietly move on. Karen hides any hint of being disheartened by my disinterest, from our talks I suspect this is because she doesn't mind at all, it's a small difference in taste that doesn't alter the shape of our friendship.
This is the spanking new National Art Center in Roppongi which only opened last year. Quite the little architects wet dream it is with all it's angles and shapes and 'ideas', I'm sure Kishô Kurokawa was pleased as punch with his curvy creation.
There's even some art in it.
Across the river is Odaiba, a man made island originally hoofed together in Edo period a few centuries back. It was originally some kinda fort (Daiba means 'fort') but is now a somewhat unpleasant shopping-amusement host. Below is a view from inside a giant mall which seemed to sell mainly pointless, pinkish things. The fake sky caught my attention.
This is the Rainbow bridge which is the prettiest connection the island has to the mainland.
And here is a big wheel you can ride. Large numbers of desperate-to-be-cool arrived in small packs and went off to tour the shops and motor displays and so forth.
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