Tokyo architecture

This post is pretty much just an excuse to throw up a bunch of pictures I found on my camera, but seeing as I'm here typing into this text box, I might as well say a few words.

The first few pictures are from a day I spent on the man-made island right in front of Tokyo. It's a pretty stupid place overall, but there were definitely some cool parts. The island has a fully-automated train system that takes you over Rainbow Bridge (second picture) and around the island. So that was cool. Also, you get some decent views of the city. It's weird though because the city is so decentralized, there's nothing that really defines the skyline. It looks completely different depending on where you're looking from. I think people are pushing for Rainbow Bridge to define the city but honestly, I had been here for almost two months and this was the first, and probably the only, time I saw it. In that same picture you can see Tokyo Tower behind the bridge. Yes, that ugly red and white tower that looks like the Eiffel Tower, only shittier. I think that's supposed to define the skyline as well, but I've only seen that three times, each time followed by a "meh."

Most of the office buildings can be found within the JR Yamanote Loop, which is a train line that circles the center-area of the city (11 FULL cars every 3 minutes or better). Today I went up to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, which has a free observation deck. The city shots at the end are from there. The sprawl is hard to capture (especially with all this bullshit glare coming from all the bullshit souvenir shops and displays behind me), but you should get an idea. City in all directions, as far as the eye can see. It's not the same kind of sprawl that you see in North American however, as instead of a downtown giving way to less and less dense housing, everything in all directions is a high-density mix of housing and local mini-downtowns and tall buildings here and there. I could see Yokohama (a "suburb") from the observation deck and you literally could not tell where Tokyo stopped and Yokohama started. All of a sudden there were just more taller buildings again. What a place! And now some pictures.

The Fuji TV station headquarters is a very strange-looking building:



Rainbow Bridge with Tokyo Tower behind it (you'll have to look at the full-sized pic to see it):



Part of that stupid island with Tokyo in the background, as seen from an observation deck:



A trip to Japan wouldn't be complete without big-ass robots:



Pictures from the observation deck at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building: