Tokyo Evening: collage of images used for part of my final project. 

Ana and I in Roppongi. 

Jonathan, Camille, and Shilpa in Roppongi. 

Jessica at the only Brazilian restaurant in Tokyo. 

Blue suits. 

Roppongi Hills. So many shops and restaurants it blows your mind--if only they had this stuff in California! 

Tokyo City View. 

Short movie of the Tokyo City View. 

Lisa and Ana 

Creepy outdoor art at Roppongi Hills. 

Another construction photo. 

The park that will be part of the Mid-town project. 

The very cool light-up model of the Tokyo Mid-town project. This model took two months to construct. 

This is the Mid-town Tokyo project, which is being designed by SOM (go USA!). One of the highlights of the trip has been a presentation at the main office on site here. Mid-town is really exciting (advertised as an "urban oasis"), and if I were to live in Tokyo and have a bunch of money to spend, I would definitely live here. At the top of the main tower, a Ritz Carlton is going to move in. There will also be a world famous museum on site.  

Matsuya Ginza department store. The department stores are so large that shopping can get really tiring. 

The Ginza, the 5th Avenue of Tokyo. The Wako department store is the largest building in the picture. It was bombed out in WWII but was restored and is as bustling as ever. 

Haunting Japanese figures in the Showakan WWII museum. The children were supposed to wear these little cloth hoods during air raids to "protect" them. The Showakan has been one of my favorite museums to date. It gave a fascinating perspective of total war from the standpoint of the Japanese people and the hardships they faced. I secretly cried a little at the end of the audio tour when I listened to clips from a journal kept by a boy who had lost his father in the war.

View of Shibuya intersection. The Gold's Gym building was beautiful at night when it glowed in purple. 

Shibuya in the rain. 

Shibuya in the rain. 

Shibuya in the rain. 

People write their prayer requests on these tablets at the Shinto shrines. It was fun looking at all of the different languages and some of the funny messages like, "god or whatever, you're doing a good job" and "I hope my move to LA goes better than I expect and that I meet a hot girl." 

Tange Kenzo's famous Olympic gymnasium. This is the building I learned about in my into to architecture history class, but it's 100 times more impressive in person (we also had studied a really lame slide of it). This was the largest suspended roof structure at the time. I love how sculptural it is. 

A new Cartier store being built across the street from Prada. I really love the design. 

The famous Prada store. I hope I'll have the chance to see this at night because it was overcast and raining when I was there.