Tuesday, May 12, 2009

"Ginza & Yurakucho"

Ginza is historically Tokyo's most well-known area (these days, I'm not so sure - it might even be Shibuya, Roppongi, or Shinjuku), and Yurakucho is way down the list, but the two are side-by-side and for the many people who visit Ginza via Yurakucho Station (JR surface train station), they have to walk through a section of Yurakucho in order to get to Ginza. Yurakucho has long been famous for cheap drinking places, and that's still partly true, although they had to demolish a wide stretch of them when they built the first Shinkansen super express from Tokyo to Osaka (completed in 1964), and the section between Yurakucho Station and Ginza has been mostly rebuilt with shiny glass & steel fashionable buildings that make the section fundamentally an extension of Ginza.

In this video (above), I begin by boarding a Yamanote Line train and riding the loop line over to Yurakucho Station, and then walking through the rebuilt part of Yurakucho and into Ginza. In Ginza (the edge of Ginza), I visit one of the oldest buildings in Ginza (the Okuno Building) to visit some art galleries, and then go over to the fashionable part of Ginza, followed by a visit to the part of Yurakucho that still has cheap drinking places - many with tables and stools that are set out on the street in front of the shops.

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://uk.youtube.com/lylehsaxon

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