Roppongi Illumination

It’s just a wee bit late, but on the 5th of December I went to Roppongi with Bekah and Sam to see the illumination! Roppongi is a super rich part of Tokyo so as long as you don’t get tempted by too much buyable stuff you’re ok! I did sort of feel like money was osmosising out of me somehow though; there were so many posh shops and people!

We all decided to meet in Roppongi itself which sort of failed; I got lost in an underground maze, Sam got on a train the wrong way for a few stops so poor Bekah was just waiting for us on her tod! Here’s what I saw just as I finally made it to Roppongi:

A waterfall wall; I was later to discover that the whole building seems to be redirecting a river for arty purposes!

A fancy looking rock thing

Bekah and I went for a wonder while we waited for Sam and ended up going to the ‘Roof Garden’ which was mostly just a bridge over the pretty lit up trees below; but it was still rather fantastic!

Some pretty shinies on the way to the bridge

The ‘roof garden’!

View from the bridge

Some more shinies and indoor bamboo just for kicks

A dog salon. This pet shop took their customers very seriously!! That salon looks better that most human ones…

Once we met up with Sam, had a bit more of a wonder on the bridge and decided that we were hungry, we went in search of food 🙂 We had a look around most of the mall and ended up going to the place we saw first! Always the way eh? But we did see some fantastic things on our food adventure, let me shower you with expensive things that I took pictures of:

So much shiny!

These are white strawberries. They cost about 7000yen/£41. Yep; well done Japan.

Although you can’t really tell in the picture, these apples are about as big as my face.

These melons cost 10/12,000yen. Did I want to spend £65/£75 on a melon to find out if it tasted any different to the £2 Tesco’s ones? Yes. Did I? Sadly I’m a student… 😛

A cute little Christmas stall

More shiny stuff!!

The place we chose to eat was an ‘American style’ bar but once we got inside it was actually very very posh. I was really surprised at how expensive the food was until I remembered that it was only expensive by Japanese standards where you can get a whole meal out for about £3! By British standards it was actually on the cheap side at about £12 for nachos, mash and grilled veggies and all of it was delicious; definitely taking Mitch there this Christmas!

mmmm

And finally it was Illumination time! We went out to see the main illumination and then wandered around the park a little.

The main illumination! Check the bottom of this post for a link to the video I took 🙂

The park next to the main event

More shiny park trees

A very very tall building that disappeared into the clouds!

Pretty bokeh tree 🙂 It’s really hard to get an iPhone to UNfocus!

A supposedly very old tree

Another pretty tree!

We headed back inside again and came across this little shop/art gallery! It had a cat theme and I took some photos of my favorite bits 🙂 I also found a Christmas present and some adorable sweetie plates I couldn’t justify buying for myself but really really wanted!!

Aren’t they amazing? So many types of lucky cats!

There were little minimalist plaques with short ditties on them and these are some of my favorites. This one says “while yawning, (the cat) meows” I ca just hear the funny little sound!

“dot, dot, dot, the cat’s beard”

This was Sam’s favorite; “Left and right differ, odd eyes”

These are the adorable plates!!

And finally we took a mosey to the roof to see more decorations and have a Starbucks! it was a lovely evening filled with sparkle and fun and good food :] Can’t ask for much more!

Above our heads as we walked around the shopping centre

More of the redirected river above heads!

Scary.

Also scary.

Sorry for the blur, but here is the outside shot of the river!

The disappearing building!!

Cheers y’all!

Oh and you can find the video of the fantastic light show here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJDuDOvJCuQ&feature=youtu.be