Travel shots #4 Japan - Tokyu Plaza Ginza, the best view of a Tokyo pedestrian crossing

We have all seen it in movies: the pedestrian crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo. It is worldfamous for the insane amount of people that cross it at the same time, in all directions. Wouldn't it be cool to see that? The truth however, is that it hardly lives up to it's fame from the ground.

Aerial view

Well obviously you want want to have a good view of the crossing and see the madness happen right in front of your eyes when hundreds, maybe a thousand people cross at the same time...in all directions! The sad thing is, that it is really hard to get a good high viewpoint. You could go to the Starbucks located at one of the corners, but because people only went there for this sole purpose and caused so much disruption taking photos that they have now officially banned anyone from taking photos there. There are also hotel rooms with a good view...but those are very expensive. And let's be honest, would you book a hotelroom just for this one view? So this left me kinda disappointed as this was one of the sights I definitely had to see for myself when coming to Japan.

So...what now?

I really love Instagram for it's ability to look up a geotag and see every photo that has been taken at a specific location. It gives me inspiration to see how other people document certain sights, but it also shows us possible locations to visit you would otherwise never know of. This exact thing happened to me, luckily. I came across a photo of a Tokyo crossing I had never seen before. I went out on a search for more information and found even more photos. I now had a potential great spot to visit, and I did.

Show us the results!

Well, hold up...I found the building, but it still wasn't easy to find the actual view. It was an absolute massive department store, brand new and beautiful. But I figured the view should have been very high up, yet the elevator wouldn't go higher than 6. After reaching the 6th floor it took walking back and forth across the floors to take several escalators, stairs and then finally...I reached the viewpoint, and was it good? It was!

The actual view

So this floor was really dedicated to the view as there wasn't much else to do there, except for buying way overpriced ice cream to enjoy while looking at the view. Still, the area filled with green and an open air roof...was quite nice. Unfortunately it was already kind of late in the day so there wasn't much light left. That did however, give some shots with cool neon-lights. I'm usually not a fan of heights, but there was such thick glass that I felt comfortable enough to be able to take my time for some shots. Here are the results:

Too bad the crossing wasn't very crowded due to the late hour and the fact that this isn't exactly a place where a lot of stuff happens in the evening. Even so it was well worth all the effort. Check out this view from the Tokyu Plaza in Ginza whenever you're in Tokyo!

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