Still in Tokyo
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
44
93
Trip End
Jan 31, 2009
Tokyo,
Kanto,
Japan
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Alp joined us for brunch. He is a friend of Engin's and works at Barclay's as a trader. Pretty stressed out about the possibility of losing his job sometime soon. He walked me through the party neighborhood of Roppongi, which was very quiet at this hour, to the metro station. I took the subway to Ginza.
LP (Lonely Planet) describes Ginza as "Tokyo's answer to New York's 5th Avenue". I don't agree. It didn't give me that feel at all. The buildings are much shorter and the shops are not heavily concentrated around a single avenue. There is more of a sprawl into the neighboring streets.
Visited the Sony Building. Was expecting to see something like the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart or a gigantic version of Sharper Image/ Brookstone. I was disappointed, because all they had was a densely populated Sony shop.
Engin was throwing a Saturday night party for charity. All the proceed were being donated to Medecin du Monde. The party was at a small but fairly luxurious club in Naka-Meguro, called "Solfa". There was a cover of 2,000 yens, which included a drink and Turkish finger food. There were 2 DJs and an artist painting. The painting would be auctioned up on completion. Although the night was a success with 250 guests, I left before midnight. Wasn't feeling too well and the accumulating cigarette smoke was irritating me. I can't believe that citizens of a country with such high life expectancy smoke so much.
During the party, hung out with some ivy league finance/consulting types. It reminded me of why I decided to take some time off in the first place...
