interstellar
i had a couple things planned today. i had a ticket that could be used at any time to the teamlab planets digital art experience in the koto ward of tokyo, and a reservation at 8:40 pm to shibuya sky, an observation deck on top of a very tall building in shibuya. since my morning and afternoon were free, i decided this would be the day i visit map camera, a world famous new and used camera gear store in shinjuku.
i started the day by heading to shinjuku.
view of the tracks from a platform at hatanodai station
after arriving at shinjuku station, i was blown away by the sheer size of it. this is the largest station in tokyo, and apparently serves over 3.5 million passengers per day. i mostly have the trains figured out at this point, but navigating this station is absolutely crazy.
i mentioned to my airbnb host that shinjuku station is crazy complicated, and she told me the station is known as “the dungeon” and is so complicated even japanese people struggle to figure it out. she also sent me this link, where someone created a 3d map of the station. on a touch screen the controls are pretty self-explanatory. on a computer, you can rotate it by holding shift and left click while moving the mouse. it is an absolute labyrinth.
once i figured out how to get out of the station, i walked directly to map camera, and saw this gigantic wendy’s on the way:
this has to be the world’s largest wendy’s. it seats over 100 people and is 3 floors.
this store is gigantic, occupying 6 floors, separated by camera brand. unfortunately, camera accessories are not a one-size-fits-all, so i had to go to the 4th floor for olympus-compatible gear.
in the early stages of planning this website and photography plan, i had considered arriving in japan without a camera, and going here day 1 to buy a camera and gear. this store is world famous and has english-speaking staff. because the yen is pretty weak right now, and because international tourists can buy things tax-free, i would have saved a lot of money buying here instead of in america beforehand.
i ultimately decided against it because i wanted to know how to use the thing and have everything i needed for the trip. i also wanted to reduce the number of planned/required things on the first couple days of my trip. and i wanted to get pictures as early as possible. but i still wanted to come here for a couple reasons.
first, the store is world famous and i wanted to check it out. second, i have noticed that the main lens i use for over 90% of photos on this website is a 25mm prime lens. on a full-frame camera, that would be the equivalent of a 50mm lens. it takes great photos, as you may have noticed. but its a bit too zoomed in for what i am trying to capture sometimes. being a prime lens, it cannot zoom in or out. it works great for many of the photos i am taking, but some of tokyo is very condensed and i am unable to “zoom with my feet” as much as i’d like. so i intended to buy a wider angle lens while i was here.
being a beginner to photography, i asked someone for assistance with deciding which lens i might want. they were extremely helpful. one of the advantages of coming to a physical store like this one is that they let you put the lenses on your camera and try them out in the store. we narrowed it down to 3 lenses:
worth noting, the prices listed in red here are for japanese citizens, aka with tax. below that on the right in much much smaller font is the tax-free price for tourists.
after trying them all, i ultimately decided on the one to the right, the m.zuiko 17mm. while it is the longest focal length of the three i was looking at, it has the lowest aperture and i was convinced it would take really amazing shallow depth-of-field photos, which proved to be true.
while a 17mm lens vs a 25mm lens might not seem like much, its actually like a 34mm compared to a 50mm. its much much more zoomed out than the lens i have been using.
i also realized while here that i have never once even used one of my lenses, the 14-42mm “kit lens” that typically comes with the camera when you buy it new. while this lens is capable of shooting at 14mm, more zoomed out than any of the lenses i have been talking about today, it isn’t the same. i am not a camera nerd, so i can’t really explain why. but photos taken with it just aren’t the same as with prime lenses. i find that really annoying honestly. i wish i could just slam some kind of one-size-fits-all 5-200mm beast lens on it and call it a day. but something about prime lenses makes them take better pictures.
when i first got the camera and all the lenses, i thought i would never bust out the 25mm prime and i would be using that kit lens 90% of the time, and switching to my other lens, the 40-150mm for distant subjects. but that didn’t turn out to be the case at all. photography is really complicated, and not being able to zoom actually makes it easier to take good photos, because there are so many factors involved in taking a photo and removing one makes it easier to get the rest right.
i used my new 17mm lens for the rest of the day.
“graphic design is my passion”
next stop, teamlab planets, located in koto city, a section of the city along the tokyo bay.
getting here from any other station would not have been nearly as complicated. but i had to re-enter the labyrinth that is shinjuku station. i walked around for about a half hour looking for the signs for the line i needed to take, but i was not finding it. eventually, a very kind japanese man in a very nice looking suit approached me and asked if i was lost. i told him i was, and he asked which line i was looking for, and he showed me how to get there. he told me even japanese people hate this station because it is so hard to navigate. i am very thankful for the existence of this man, because i probably would have wandered around for another hour without finding the section i needed to get to.
teamlab planets is in koto city, a “special ward” of tokyo along the tokyo bay. because my ticket could be used anytime, i decided to walk around the koto city area for a while first. i think this is the most beautiful part of tokyo i have seen yet. everything about it is so beautiful and clean, and a lot of it is wide open spaces, which seem to be somewhat of a rarity.
so far i think my favorite parts of tokyo are hatanodai and koto.
it was finally time for teamlab planets. this is put on by the same art collective that did the borderless exhibit i went to the other day, so i expected this to be amazing, and it did not disappoint. this was much cooler than borderless, and i really loved borderless.
when you arrive, they make you take off your shoes and socks, and roll up your pants to your knees. many of the exhibits here involve water, sometimes up to what they called “knee-level” but for me was like “lower-shin-level” - that isn’t a joke, the highest the water ever got was like 8 inches below my knees. but about a third of the experience is with your feet in some amount of water.
this was a fascinating experience. i think everyone who comes to tokyo should go to this, because it is extremely unique and a visual spectacle. the number of times i said “wow” out loud to myself had to be at least 2 or 3 dozen.
it starts off with a series of these dark hallways, and then you turn a corner and there is an upward slope with water rushing down it that you have to walk up. the floor is made from a very grippy material to prevent slipping. when you get to the top of that, there is an area with fresh towels to dry your feet, and then you move to the next exhibit, a large maze-like room with mirrors on the walls and floors, and thousands of led-strip cables hanging from the ceiling, changing colors rabidly as you walk through.
it was really mesmerizing. it felt like a sci-fi trip inside the internet.
the next exhibit was maybe the highlight of the trip. this was the “knee-level” water experience, and it was breathtaking.
i got a couple videos of it. it was incredible.
after this is a small room filled with giant orbs you have to push around to get through the room:
after this room, there is a room that was a sensory overload. the room is a giant dome with a mirrored floor, making you feel like you are in the center of a big sphere. they ask you to lie down in the middle of the room here, but there were a ton of people so i didn’t do so.
walking in the room was difficult. the moving scenery in all directions makes it really disorienting. i kept feel like i was going to fall over. it was a magical experience.
next was a room with weird alien eggs in them. strangely unnerving, if you’ve seen the first alien movie.
next was an incredible exhibit, its a giant room with mirrored walls and flooring, with strings of flowers hanging from the ceiling slowly moving up and down.
this room also has mirrored floors and walls. to get into it, you have to lie on your back and slide under the flowers.
this was a really beautiful exhibit, and a perfect way to end the experience. i highly recommend anyone visiting tokyo check this place out. i would consider it mandatory!
next up was shibuya sky, an observation deck on top of a very tall building in shibuya.
i got here way earlier than i needed to, so i walked around shibuya for a while. i didn’t get a ton of pictures in shibuya because it was kind of overwhelming just to be here. i have never been to times square, but i imagine the feeling is similar. giant buildings everywhere, huge lit up signs in every direction, noise blasting at you from every direction. it was a sensory overload.
at one point i went about a third of the way up the building shibuya sky is in and got this photo. i think this is the famous shibuya crossing, but i am not 100% certain of that.
it was finally time to check out shibuya sky. you go up in an elevator, and they tell you to remove any hats. you also can’t bring any bags with you, so i had to stow the backpack and camera bag in a locker that costs ¥100. you get the coin back when you return, though. this meant that i couldn’t bring any additional lenses with me. or camera batteries. which should have been fine if i’d been paying attention to my camera’s battery life today at all.
unfortunately, i went up there with a nearly dead battery and no replacements on me. so i only got to take a couple photos.
this experience was quite different from the skytree. this is much shorter at 229 meters (751 feet) high, while the skytree’s observation decks are 350 meters (1148 feet) and 450 meters (1476 feet). I didn’t know this until just now, but the tip of the skytree is 634 meters (2080 feet), making it the third tallest structure in the world, only beaten by merdeka 118 in malaysia at 678 meters (2,227 feet) and the burj khalifa in dubai at a staggering 829 meters (2,722 feet). other facts i learned about skytree just now: it was named using a nationwide poll that concluded on my 17th birthday, and the height of 634 meters was specifically chosen because the tower is in a location that used to be called the musashi province, and the numbers 6, 3, and 4 can be read as “mu” (6), “sa” (3), and “shi” (4). some japanese knowers reading this might think “hey, 6 is roku isn’t it?” that’s what i thought, and then i found out that there are 2 ways to read numbers in japanese because of course its complicated.
anyway enough skytree facts, i went to a different thing today.
i had to delete a few of the photos i got here, because the way this place is laid out is great for viewing but not great for photography. because it is open air, and very high up, they have to put up these glass walls all around the edges to keep people from falling / jumping / throwing stuff off the edge. and because its pretty well lit up here, it causes weird reflections in the photos that are really annoying. totally does not interfere with the viewing, but it absolutely interferes with the photography.
all in all, i think skytree is a better experience if you can only do the one. i am still very glad i did this one, and i made sure to book it late at night so that i could see the city from up high during the day and night. but i think skytree wins for being higher up and more of a spectacle. at the end of the day this is just the roof of a building. skytree was explicitly designed for getting a view from very high up, while this is just an added thing on top of a building that already was a mall. i do not mean to criticize, shibuya sky is a great experience, and if you are visiting tokyo, you should totally go to it. but only if you’ve already been to skytree.
i only got one more photo today, and it was in the mall while waiting for the elevator back down to the train station, but it ended up being one of the better photos i took. it felt like a scene from the matrix.
