Summer diaries Part 5.4: Tokyo – a not so common perspective

One of the days I walked around Tokyo close to the Imperial Palace as well as the bay area to get away from the loud Shibuya and Shinjuku areas and to explore the more residential and industrial neighborhoods.

What was quite striking to me on this walk were the residential skyscrapers. We all have seen skyscrapers of various types but what made a completely different impression here is that most of these have actually balconies, i.e., it is obvious that they are residential buildings. The atmosphere that this creates is weird. So many people compressed in so little space. I actually sneaked into one of the buildings and went to a random floor. Everything was super tight and narrow, almost like a cave. I estimated that these skyscrapers hold about 2k people which is quite significant: guess-estimate with 1.5 people on average per unit which is think is very much on the low side. In this area it was also possible to observe, say a more standard and not so exclusive life in Tokyo and it is very much different from the crazy speed and loudness in the more fashionable and expensive districts. I hope I was able to capture some of the spirit in the photos below – for comparison, the very first one is Shinjuku taken from the Shinjuku station bridge.

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Related articles

• Summer diaries Part 4.2: Kyoto streets day and night
• Summer diaries Part 4.3: Kyoto Imperial Palace
• Summer diaries Part 4.4: making lemonade in Kyoto
• Summer diaries Part 4.5: Fushimi Inari-taisha
• Summer diaries Part 4.6: Nishiki Market
• Summer diaries Part 5.1: Tokyo Drift
• Summer diaries Part 5.2: Tokyo nights
• Summer diaries Part 5.3: Harajuku