Yesterday, while people in the U.S. were eating turkey and giving thanks, I took a trip to Tocho, a.k.a. the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, to get a vaccine booster. It was my first time doing that at Tocho, which has a couple of free observatories up in its twin towers. I had been to both observatories several times already, and I was surprised when they ushered me onto the elevator to see that it was going up to the north observatory on the 45th floor. They’re now using that observatory as a vaccination site, which may be why the line for the south one was so long, since it’s currently handling twice the number of sightseers.
Autumn in Shinjuku Chuo Park
After I left Tocho, I walked across the street to Shinjuku Chuo Park to enjoy the fall colors and the view of Nishi-Shinjuku’s skyscrapers as the sun was going down and hitting their west side. People were picnicking on the green, and skateboarders were out near the fountain, which is apparently named “Shinjuku Niagara Falls,” though it was running dry yesterday, just as it did after the Tohoku disaster on 3/11. This may be because yesterday was a public holiday in Japan, Kinro Kansha no Hi, or Labor Thanksgiving Day. I also noticed as I was walking to Tocho that the famous Eye of Shinjuku sculpture had gone dark.
Chuo means “Central” in Japanese, so everything from the name of the park and fountain to the holiday occasion and the sight of Tocho’s towers reminded me of my time in New York. I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade there in 2000 and visited the Twin Towers and the museums around Central Park in 2001. In the context of these pre-9/11 memories, watching a plane fly in low near Tocho’s towers (see below) was an uncomfortable image.
As The Japan Times reported in 2020, Haneda Airport added new flight paths over Shinjuku, Shibuya, and other parts of Tokyo in an effort to help increase tourism before the Olympics. Since then, you can often look up and see low-flying planes in these places. Sometimes, they’ll disappear behind taller buildings like Tocho, then reappear on the other side.
Though not pictured here, another high-rise you can see from the park is the Park Hyatt Hotel, home of the ever-popular New York Bar and Grill. It has murals of landmarks like Radio City Music Hall, which only adds to the feeling that being in Shinjuku is like being in a bizarro Manhattan sometimes.
Flashback Photos: Manhattan 2000 and Shinjuku 2010
On a lighter note, I happened to see in the news that David Letterman returned to The Late Show this week for the first time since handing it over to Steven Colbert in 2015. One of the first things I remember doing in Manhattan around the turn of the millennium was seeking out the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway. I recently used Fotor’s AI-driven “Old Photo Restorer” effect on a scanned Kodak Funsaver pic I had of the theater marquee.
Being able to touch up a 23-year-old photo online like that made me feel for the first time like, “Hey, maybe AI isn’t all bad.” Of course, if this were a dystopian sci-fi world (which it probably is), that’s the exact thought a human being might have right before AI made them and their job obsolete.
It’s strange to think that Japan now fills more of the distance between me and New York than my time in the U.S. does. The first autumn I was here, back in 2010, I also visited Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden on a bright November day when the leaves were changing. It, too, has a Central Park feel in places, especially when you see the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building — which has a tiered, rectangular design that’s somewhat reminiscent of the Empire State Building — looming in the distance.