Shibuya Crossing, Sumida Park – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

Because of a late start to the morning and trouble finding a restaurant that was open and not full for lunch (one full and not accepting any more customers, even to wait; two closed), this was a foreshortened afternoon. So, I didn’t see much. But I did watch the Shibuya Crossing and visit a park, along with a couple of other activities and the walks between them.

And please stay tuned until the end of this post for a brief programming note

Shibuya Crossing

Shibuya Crossing, sometimes known as Shibuya Scramble, is famous. If you want to see a mass of, some would say a rat race of, humanity intermingling somewhat rhythmically, that’s the place to see it.

Two major streets intersect at Shibuya Crossing. An exceptionally heavily used pedestrianized shopping street also dumps onto the intersection at an angle. What’s more, an entrance to a major hub station that serves some subway and urban rail lines is also beside the intersection.

Pedestrians come at the intersection from all directions along all of the streets, including the pedestrianized one. And the area is very busy in general. When I was there, the sidewalks of the streets and the whole pedestrianized shopping street were packed.

Pedestrians are not allowed to cross the intersection in any direction if any vehicles have green lights in any direction. Instead, it’s a scramble intersection where there is a phase of the lights that gives green lights to pedestrians, and only pedestrians, no matter which way they want to go. So some people cross diagonally, on both diagonals, and some go straight across, proceeding from one sidewalk to the one directly across from it.

Because pedestrians have to wait until all of the vehicle traffic lights cycle through green lights for the different directions, pedestrians build up at the intersection until they get a green light. Then there is a magical, mass dance as the diagonal crossers intersect each other.

It’s kind of amazing to watch.

When I was in Tokyo about seven years ago, I crossed diagonally once and managed to survive. It’s not that I didn’t manage to survive this time; it’s just that I did straight across crossings to get where I was going, so I didn’t have to dance with anyone.

There are some tall buildings around Shibuya Crossing. A bridge with a glass wall on one side joins two of the buildings on either side of one of the streets. That provides a good viewing spot to watch the mayhem.

I read that Shibuya Crossing is busiest at rush hour. I assume that’s because of the subway/train station that’s right there. I took the video below from that vantage point at about 2:15 in the afternoon, so not at rush hour. Thus, it probably wasn’t nearly as crowded as it gets.

(By the way, I still hadn’t had lunch at that point. I’m blaming any jerkiness of the video on the effects of my peckishness.)

Hachiko Statue

There’s a statue on one of the squares on a corner of Shibuya Crossing. It’s not far from the entrance to Shibuya Station. It’s a statue honouring Hachiko.

Who was Hachiko, you might ask? Hachiko was a dog of the Akita breed.

According to the story provided by my walking tour app, Hachiko was born on a farm in 1923. He was adopted by a professor at the University of Tokyo, Hidesaburo Ueno, in 1924. Professor Ueno and Hachiko became very attached. Every evening, without fail, Hachiko walked to Shibuya Station on his own to greet his master as he came out of the station.

Professor Ueno died suddenly, but the story goes that for the nine years, nine months, and 15 days until Hachiko also died, he continued to come to the station every day, no matter what the weather, to wait for his master.

The walking tour app doesn’t say how long Hachiko waited each day, or who fed him during that time, but the crowds of regulars who passed by Shibuya Crossing every day noticed and admired Hachiko. Word spread throughout Japan. According to the app, the nation became endeared to Hachiko, hence the statue.

The Hachiko Statue gets an honourable mention not just in my walking tour app, but also in guidebooks. Consequently, it’s very popular with tourists, such as myself. There was a crowd around the statue when I was there. A continuous flow of people waited their turn to stand by the statue while someone else took their picture. It took me a few tries before I could snap a picture of just Hachiko in the second or two between the changeovers of people.

My walking tour app also recommends visiting a couple of shopping streets near Shibuya Crossing, including the one that empties onto it. But they were both extremely cramped.

I’m not good with crowds. The area was so overcrowded that I was feeling a tad uncomfortable. To put “a tad uncomfortable” in perspective, I would imagine that, just before the machine finished its compacting job, I would feel almost as uncomfortable if I fell into an industrial-strength trash compactor. So, I didn’t explore the shopping streets.

Sumida Park

For some relief from the crush, I walked over to another of Tokyo’s parks, Sumida Park.

Google Maps and Apple Maps both show that the park has a pond. I generally like parks with ponds. When I arrived at the park, I was confronted with construction hoarding near the entrance I used.

The hoarding didn’t fill anywhere near the width of the entrance, so I had no problem going into Sumida Park.

The maps showed the pond further toward the middle of the park. I figured I’d walk past the construction area and enjoy the pond. I thought that, but it was not to be. The construction hoarding continued all the way to and beyond the pond. It ballooned out wider at the pond to encompass all of it.

By the pond, there was a small section of the hoarding that was transparent plexiglass. Through it, I could see the pond’s concrete floor and walls emptied of water. There were some construction workers in there doing who knows what.

So, that’s a first. I’ve been subjected to the DLJSSIA’s (Don’t Let Joel See Stuff International Association) harassment in several cities. But this is the first time they closed down and blocked off a pond because I was there.

Nevertheless, Sumida Park is quite large. It has some lawns and some beautifully forested areas. When I was there, the sun was low in the sky, which resulted in gorgeous lighting on some of the trees.

The park also has some benches. Sitting on one of them, I looked at the map. Upon zooming out not very much, I was surprised to learn that Sumida Park is quite close to the shrine in a forest that I visited the other day, Meiji Jingu Shrine. The map showed only green space between the two.

They are so close that, when I left the park and walked to the station where I caught the urban train that stops near my hotel, I passed the torii that marks the entrance to the road through the forest leading to the shrine.

So, it seems I brought Tokyo full circle today. This morning, I visited Tokyo Tower, which I’d also walked to on my first evening here. And this afternoon, I serendipitously got close to the shrine I visited a few days ago. Coming full circle sounds like a poetic way to end my time in Tokyo, but it’s only a coincidence that I’m moving on tomorrow morning.

Programming Note

As I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, I’m leaving Tokyo tomorrow morning. However, I won’t provide a summary of my time in Tokyo here because I’m coming back.

I’ll return the day before my flight back home out of Tokyo Haneda airport. I’ll have a half day here then. Plus, my flight doesn’t leave until 6:50 pm, so I’ll have time to do stuff that day too.

(By the way, now that Toronto has gone back to standard, which Tokyo never goes on, Toronto is 14 hours behind Tokyo as opposed to the 13 hours while it was on daylight saving time. Japan doesn’t use daylight saving time. I’m scheduled to arrive in Toronto one hour and forty-five minutes before I leave Tokyo. I figure that if I could somehow figure out how to fly from Tokyo to Toronto every day of my life, I’d eventually be years younger. But maybe that’s not how that works.)

It’s hard to believe that this first, longer stint in Tokyo is coming to an end. It flew by. But never fret, this trip still isn’t even one-quarter over. So there’s still a lot to come. Stay tuned.

There are two programming points to make here. First, because I won’t have time to do anything worth reporting on in the morning, I’ll post only one entry tomorrow rather than the usual two.

Second, I’ll post a Tokyo summary on my last day here.

Okay?