Sensory overload

It was a beautiful sunny morning as Cara, Bridget and I took advantage of our few hours free time and set off early for the Meiji shrine.  A lovely, peaceful place in the middle of a wood - a green haven from the noise, lights and shops of Tokyo.

Tokyo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building,
with the 'Cocoon' building on the left

After some present buying in the trendy Harajuka area, Cara and I took a lift to the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building to get a bird's eye view of Tokyo.  From that vantage point, I really got a sense of a vast new Asian city: flat, modern and sprawling as far as the eye can see.  Although sunny, it was a shame that the smog obscured our view of Mount Fuji.

In the afternoon we travelled for about an hour to Kashiwa, a northern suburb of Tokyo, to visit the Urban Design Centre.  The brand new train line reminded me of the shiny new London Overground (although the Tokyo version had heated seats - come on London Transport!), and indeed the project we visited centred on new urban housing development, similar to those TBE is involved with in Hackney.

Urban Design Centre Kashiwa

The two directors of the centre welcomed us into their bright, spacious, purpose built public exhibition and meeting space, and told us about their work  to encourage the development of a community in this newly built garden city. The project is a collaboration with Tokyo University and the local government, which started with a residents forum, and now has the ambitions to create a good quality sustainable garden city and local creative culture and industry.

Model of Kashiwa's built
environment at the Urban
Design Centre

To do this the Urban Design Centre Kashiwa provides information to the public about future development plans; organises meetings with residents, built environment professionals and local government officials; and delivers workshops to encourage residents to participate in the development of the area, through community activities and workshops on subjects such as eco-design.  It was very interesting to hear how the Urban Design Centre had created a sense of community, hear the directors' aspirations to continue the project beyond the completion of building development, and learn that the fantastic space would become a permanent community centre for the residents of Kashiwa.  The members of the Urban Design Centre Kashiwa were also very interested to hear about our work in the architecture centres.

We arrived back in central Tokyo after our meeting at 7pm looking forward to the prospect of spending an hour at Tokyo Hands, an enormous stationery/craft supplies department store.  I was on a mission to get Aimee some origami paper, particularly as she had helped me so much in the mad rush to get out of the office on the Friday evening before travelling to Japan.  You can imagine our disappointment when we found it was closed...for 5 days...

Neon Tokyo

Still, we were cheered up with a walk around the neon lights of Shinjuku, the Golden Gai (narrow alleyways with tiny stalls, where 'salary men' sit at counters drinking beer and eating barbecued meat) and the more chilled out restaurant area of Yoyogi.  After dinner, Bridget and I went up two more high rise towers to see the lights of Tokyo's sprawl against the night sky.

Returning to the hotel at 11.30 I was exhausted....an overload of neon, noise, smells, consumerism and crowds had taken its toll, and I looked forward to a day out of the city the next day.