Sons of Loki

Roppongi Hills (六本木ヒルズ) is a multipurpose entertainment, residential and commercial development located in the neighbourhood of Roppongi in Minato Ward, Tokyo. Designed by property tycoon Minoru Mori, construction started in 2000 and finished in 2003. Over a 27 acre lot, the complex incorporates offices, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafes, the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, an art gallery and observation deck, the headquarters of TV Asahi, and several parks.

Frustratingly, Roppongi Hills lacks an obvious street entrance approaching from the Oedo Line station. Visitors may be drawn towards the landmark 238m Mori Tower, but the cheesily-named Hollywood Beauty Salon building blocks the entrance and the entrance to Roppongi Hills’ central plaza is not obvious.

Rather, the grandest entrance is from the Hibiya Line station, with a enormous three-story escalator inside a central atrium.

The centrepiece of Roppongi Hills is Mori Tower (森タワー), a 54 story, 238m skyscraper that incorporates cafes and restaurants at the base, offices in the middle, and an art museum and observation deck at the top.

Before Mori Tower lies Roku-Roku Plaza (66プラザ, a reference to Roppongi Hills’ address in the sixth district of Roppongi (literally ‘six trees’)). Designed in modernist steel and glass, this side of the complex has a feel of some futuristic metropolis.

Tempering the glass facade of Mori Tower is the stonework incorporated in the more post-modernly designed surrounding buildings.

The layout allows vistas of nearby Tokyo Tower, which pops into view as you move about the complex.

Throughout, a fusion of various building styles creates an almost theme-park like ambience. Roppongi Hills is designed as a destination as much as a shopping mall, a place that in itself provides an enjoyable experience. Exploring the different zones helps to create a sense that this place is more than the sum of its parts.

The roads that cut through the complex are themselves part of the whole assembly, with a boulevard feel that is worlds away from Tokyo’s more dense, cramped areas.

Compared to the rest of Roppongi, the Hills area has a distinctly more upmarket feel. Beyond Roku-Roku Plaza are areas which feel like the backstreets of some quaint French town, lined with boutiques and restaurants.

One of the hearts of the complex is the Arena, where today a Sony 3D presentation was being held.

Trees and greenery can be found throughout.

Multiple levels provide expansive views and break up the structure of the outdoor areas.

Even the most remote corners have been designed with attention to detail.

The residential towers feature commercial spaces on the ground floor, with everything from upscale restaurants to dog-washing salons. Apartments range from 450,000 yen (£3,462) to 1,720,000 yen (£13,326) per month. (For comparison, most one bedroom apartments in Tokyo start at around 80,000 yen (£615).)

There’s even a Lutherian church on site.

The shopping side of the complex is expansive and sprawling, but easy to get lost in.

Each floor has a different layout to the others; escalators are separated, making it hard to ascend or descend several floors at a time.

However, the mixture of expansive and narrow spaces helps to give Roppongi Hills a different feel to most malls, and makes browsing with no particular intention a delight. Most of the stores sell fashion and accessories, including a shop dedicated to umbrellas.

Reflecting Roppongi’s large foreigner population and as a popular tourist attraction, all signage is in Japanese and well-translated English.

Art installations can be found across the streets, including a giant LED counter by the Gate Tower. In the Gate Tower itself, a branch of Tsutaya and Starbucks attracts browsers for its selection of arty magazines and books on design, including glossy coffee table books on Roppongi Hills itself.

Most shopping malls are rarely anything to get excited about. However, Roppongi Hills succeeds where others fall to mediocrity by imposing its own identity on the paradigm of recreational complexes, rather than simply being a venue for shops. Areas of natural beauty integrate with 21st century architecture; visitors congregate in beautifully-realised public spaces. Roppongi Hills is less like a mall and more like a self-contained city: a kind of arcology dropped into a Tokyo neighbourhood.

Popped down to the local combini to buy Shonen Jump for to practice my reading, and it took me back to the heady summers of buying thick Ranma paperbacks for a whopping £12 from Abstract Sprocket, only Shonen Jump has far more content for friggin’ 240 yen (£1.50). What a country.

Yet a country where beer costs £6 a pint, as evidenced by our trip last night to joy-of-joys Roppongi, which was fun in the bizarre dumb way that only Roppongi can be.

Last night started off with the TUFS international welcome party, which had free sushi and beer – always a good combination. Unfortunately, with the heady enthusiasm of freshers’ week long, long behind me, I totally failed to meet many new people and forgot all the names, but this Leeds alumni who was at TUFS three years ago turned up and we had a very reassuring chat. It is fine. You can be put in level 200 and wind up in 500. Just study and read manga and you too can wind up graduating with a cushy teaching job, which is what he was doing.

So then I headed on down to Musashi-koganei to meet Miles, Rob and Katy, it being round about where they live, and we proceeded from McDonalds to Hub to the hour-long two-transfer journey to distant Roppongi. It was getting late. The trains would be stopping soon. There was no way back.

We picked up two highly excitable Australians, but managed to lose them by declining a taxi ride, and Rob rediscovered this club he’d been to last year. Typical Roppongi joint – ridiculously small and overpriced, with two or three confused looking tourists and misplaced salarymen – and yet with a heady enthusiasm that was strangely endearing, from the MJ-loving DJ to the gorgeous Michelle Yeoh lookalike behind the bar knocking back bottles of Corona and juggling limes (probably).

And so we partied until the early morn, left, found a Johnsons, ate some breakfast at 4am, got back to the station, and began the loong unpleasant train ride with the rest of the early birds back to the suburbs. A night out in Tokyo. Needed that, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again any time soon.

Rob and I were so ridiculously sleep-deprived by the end that we spent about ten minutes laughing at a poster with illustrations of the stuff you shouldn’t do on escalators – don’t run, hold the handrail, don’t be an old man who falls over on the escalator and drops his cane and gets kicked in the head oh god it was not funny in the slightest and yet it was the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Oh, and Obama’s been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Good for him, and I do like Obama, but … uh … what has he really achieved so far? I have no doubt that by the end of his term he’ll have brought about some worthy changes but he’s not even been in office a year!