Tokyo Shibuya and TeamLabs

Katie had some shopping to do today, so we headed into Shibuya to start the day with the scramble crossing. To be honest, I think YouTube videos had hyper-inflated expectations here, and as it turned out, we ended up walking through it several times without much fanfare, although I did read that at its busiest there are 3,000 or so people using the crossing at each light change, which certainly wouldn't have been the case when we were there this morning. We left Kate in one of the multi storey clothes shops and headed off to find interesting things of our own. This included walking through a shop called Tokyu Hands which is a variety store full of practical and interesting things with a quirky three tier offset floor layout. Craig ended up buying a new sketch book here.

Rendevouzing with Kate, I was required to give an opinion on a new jacket. We then set off to walk through nearby Cat Street which was supposed to be a pedestrian friendly trendy vibe unique fashion and cool street food place. It seemed to be more international shops like Patagonia, Adidas, Nike etc. It was still a cool street, and we grabbed some street food here for a light lunch.

We took a long way back to Shibuya Station to walk through Miyashita Park which is a shopping complex with a rooftop green space and apparently on a clear day there are views to Mt Fuji. But just like the Imperial Palace Gardens, this week the rooftop is closed off. Kind of weird...

We had a date at TeamLab Planets Tokyo about an hour away, so we jumped on several trains to make it to our 2.30pm reservation time. This was a mix of some super cool immersive experiences where you are wading around in white milky water to just below your knees with light generated koi fish swimming all round you, to many different 3D light and mirror experiences, to a hanging garden where orchids are suspended and raise up and down as you walk through them. After a few hours in here, we walked to Toyosu Gururi Park for sunset views across to Tokyo, and then walked on a little further to Odaiba Seaside Park. We had a yummy Udon noodle dinner here with the twinkling lights of Tokyo, the Tokyo Tower and views of the rainbow bridge, although no coloured lights on it tonight.

It was nearly an hour home view several trains tonight and we got our first experience of being packed in like sardines. It was kinda weird because this guy starts chatting to us, and to us he looked Japanese, but he was being a) chatty on the train and b) super helpful to people getting on and off and speaking to Japanese people in English so we could tell he was not local. Had a lovely conversation with him, an international student from Khazistan who is studying his Master's here for 18 months, and he makes a funny joke about how no-one bothers him as he looks Japanese even though he is a foreigner.Read more