Many people are either flooding in to the metro station, or to the little bars and restaurants in the small alleys behind the glass facade office buildings. The ambiance here is busy and a bit stressful. There are many massage stores in the alleys. The massage stores are not common in other places, at least in the places I have visited so far. Along with the cigarettes vending machines and ubiquitous bars, I guess office workers in this district must be very stressful so that there are so many businesses flourished to meet the needs of these workers to relax after a whole day of working. Through my observation, consumption here is not cheap. The average price of restaurants and bars, although not carefully calculated, is about 1200 to 1500 yen. There are fancier seafood and western-style restaurants, the average price ranges from 2000 to 5000 yen.
Although most people I saw in that area are men, there are still many women. Some of them are young waitresses in restaurants, and others are office workers with older ages. Those female office workers look very professional: they wear suits or long dresses and high heels with exquisite makeups. There are only two students I saw on my whole journey and very few foreigners (just by looking at the appearance) as well.
Buildings in the area are very tall. Because Japan is a country frequently undergoes the attack of earthquakes, most buildings are avoiding to be built too tall. But in this area, most buildings are very tall that seems to be telling people that this is a central business district that has tall buildings like any other prosperous business centers around the world.
I entered one of the newly built office building called Toranomon Hills. The building even has its own mascot, called Toranomon. Toranomon is a cat-type business robot. It is from the 22nd century and travels back to now use a time machine. Its mission is to help people to build a “Mirai Tokyo.” The inspiration of Toranomon’s design is clearly from Doraemon, which is also a cat type robot that travels back to 20th & 21st century by time machine. Doraemon and Toranomon have similar pronunciation, and they all have a tiny bell on their necks. The difference is that Toranomon is white, and it has a longer tail and two cat ears. Design a mascot for a building is something rare, but to me it is a very “Japanese” way of doing things: to practice personification on non-human objects. The personification is very often seen on Japanese media, I saw the illustrator infuse characteristics of different fruit to the outfits, makeups, and hairstyles of the girl’s in anime, the girl with distinctive features are then represent a type of fruit.
The Toranomon Hills is a multifunctional office building that incorporates many features. It could be treated as a perfect example of modern buildings in CBDs. The top 5 floors belongs to a luxury hotel with the bar, chapel and event space that could accommodate weddings and conferences. The nine floors below the hotel are premium residential units. The rest of the building is consisting of 30 floors of office, 2 floors of grand meeting halls, 3 floors of upscale department stores and restaurants. There is a garden outside the building and the inner decoration of the building is modern and cozy. I took a picture of the first floor near a cafeteria, and from the picture, we can see the designer used a high ceiling to create a capacious visual effect, and by transplanting real trees into the building, the boundary between artificial and natural environment is blurred.
What companies are inside of the building? My original guess was mostly banks or businesses in the financial sector. I am half right, but there are more companies. There are Japan branch of Walt Disney Company and UnionPay international Co., Ltd, and local consulting firms, banks, credit unions, and also government institutions like government pension Investment fund and Tokyo 2020 licensing office.
Only two blocks away from the Toranomon Hills, there is an ancient building hiding inside the concrete forest. Although it is closed for visitors thus I cannot take a look at the inside of the building, I still feel a sense of serenity when I approach it. There are actually no tall buildings surround it, only quiet resident halls accompany it.
I finally back to the station Kamiyacho Station, away from the Shimabashi station where I got off. I really enjoyed the time to explore the neighborhood an observe every detail, touchable or untouchable, use my heart. I feel like to walk around randomly is perhaps one of the best way to truely feel a city.
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