Many Poorly Shot iphone pictures of Roppongi

I got a requested for more pictures, so I thought I'd put together a little photo tour of the Roppongi area where I'm living. If you haven't read my previous post on Roppongi you can find it here. I apologize for the general poor quality of the pictures and videos, I took them with my iphone and I'm a pretty big amateur when it comes to photography. If anyone wants to send me a critique with some advice that would be much appreciated.

Well lets get started by walking straight out my front door past the Hugo Boss shop, and there are a whole bunch of expensive designer shops.

In the top of the frame you see a bridge type thing. Here's the shot of my building from up there. My building is the kind of ugly one in the middle.

Just off to the right here is the base of the Morri Tower of Roppongi Hills. There's a kind of outdoor stage there where there happened to be some sort of all day Hula dancing event going on. I took this movie a group of adorable 10ish year old girls doing their routine.

I also took another movie to try and give you a sense of the environment, with Morri Tower looming over the stage. It came out a bit skewed, amateur I know, sorry.

Here's a shot looking down on the stage from the stairs you see behind.

And here's one from the top of the stairs of Midtown Tokyo Tower in the distance. We'll be going there later.

Also at Roppongi Hills, there's this huge spiderish sculpture.

If you head off the main streets just south of Roppongi Hills, you'll find a neighborhood called Azujuban. Azujuban has kind of a European feel with lots of small street side cafes and boutiques.

There's even a McDonalds, although this is the most chique McDonalds I have ever seen.

In Azujuban you'll find places like McDonalds right next to more traditional Asian establishments. Not sure how I would describe this place, but definitely not chique.

This is the restaurant that has the best bruschetta I've ever had. The seafood pasta with cream sauce was also fantastic.

Tokyo is one of the best culinary cities in the world but it can be a bit tough for vegetarians. There just doesn't seem to be a big vegetarian culture here, even vegetable dishes are often prepared with stock made from meat. There are vegetarian places of course they just take a little more work to find. One vegetarian place I've come to like quite a bit is Eat More Greens Cafe in Azujuban. They also have a great craft beer selection.

The food certainly beats Athan's fair. Soymilk coconut doughnut and matcha late, yummmm...

After Azujuban, I made my way back to Roppongi crossing. Roppongi crossing is where all of the seedy night clubs and western chain restaurants are located.

Here's Outback Steakhouse and TGI Fridays. Haven't gotten around to trying either of these places, annd probably not going to either.

I find it pretty amusing that come nightfall it's impossible to walk by these American chains without getting propositioned for "massages."

Also at Roppongi Crossing there are giant screens with advertisements going. I've seen this one several times and it still makes me scratch my head.

One thing about Roppongi crossing is that you wouldn't even know some of best places existed if you weren't looking for them. Here for instance is the entrance to Ant'n Bee, which I wrote about earlier here. You go in here and down the stairs.

Next up I made my way north of Roppongi Crossing to the Tokyo Midtown complex. On my way I saw a pet store and they were selling baby monkeys!!!!!!

Tokyo Midtown is another upscale complex like Roppongi Hills, also includes a tower as well.

Here though they have these interactive digital maps.

Now at first this just seems like a large touchscreen, which would be cool and all but not that big a deal. Then you realize you don't actually have to touch the screen to hit the buttons. You just have to gesture your finger towards it and it works. It's crazy, like that consol in Minority Report, I have no idea how it works but it's wild.

After Tokyo Midtown, I went back to Roppongi Hills to check out the Mori Art Museum which is on the 52nd floor along with the observation deck. Unfortunately there was no photography allowed in the Museum but you can read about the exhibit here. The Michilin man type guy was my favorite. The theme of the exhibit was "windows" and one piece was a large clear glass sculture of a closed window, which they had placed in front of a real window so you could look through it out onto a huge vista of Tokyo (remember 52nd floor!). Very cool.

Luckily out on the observation deck photography was allowed. So here's a shot of the Tokyo Tower, and of my apartment from above.

Anyway that's it. If anyone has any more requests be sure to send them on.