Shibuya is so different from my memory

 Shibuya is so different from my memory

A 3-night, 4-day trip to Tokyo from March 11th to 15th.

My business was done in half a day, so I spent the rest of the time walking around Tokyo alone for the first time in a while.

It was cold in Tokyo in mid-March.

I knew that because I had lived there for over 30 years until three years ago, but it felt intensely cold for my body that was used to living in KL.

The cold isn't the only enemy when walking around Tokyo.

Perhaps because of the large number of tourists, the trains are packed for longer periods of time.

It feels like it's impossible to ride a train in the Tokyo city center after 6pm (probably until the last train).

The chances of getting a seat on the Yamanote Line on a Saturday afternoon were also very low.

The thing that surprised me the most about Tokyo, which I saw for the first time in several years, was Shibuya.

I got on the JR and arrived at Shibuya Station.

I wasn't in a hurry, so I just went with the flow to go outside.

I ended up on the second floor of a building I'd never seen before.

I went to the terrace where I could see outside, and the scenery was unfamiliar to me. It was a backstreet area filled with mixed-use buildings.

Thinking that this was bad, I followed the signs to Shibuya Mark City, where I could easily find the location.

I walked over the outer overpass (which has been there for a long time, but now connects high-rise buildings) to the Mark City building.

When I went to see the scramble crossing from there, I was greeted by a rather lonely sight.

The construction of the JR Shibuya Station building is still at the foundation stage, so there is nothing above.

The scramble crossing exists in the valley between the high-rise buildings, alongside a vast construction site.

Of course, there is no Hachiko statue which is very famous in Japan, so even if you say this is Shibuya...

 

  

Shibuya, Station is on the right side

Even at this unpicturesque scramble crossing, foreign tourists (mostly people who look Western) were taking lots of photos and videos.

Foreign languages ​​can be heard everywhere in Tokyo.

Asian people seem to be used to crowded trains, probably because many of them work and live there.

I returned to Japan briefly last fall, but it was a base for meeting people in Tokyo.

It seems that food prices have gone up a little since then.

It must have been about five years since I last took a leisurely stroll around Tokyo, looking at the cityscape.

 I felt like I was Urashima Taro in a Japanese legend. Taro felt his home village like the other world after spending some years at Ryugu Palace in the deep sea.