What's that you say? You want to see more pictures from Japan? Well then, you're in luck! A so begins a new series...

In August of 2005 I made good on a promise to my brother: I had promised him that if he graduated from High School and at least made an application to college that I would gift to him a trip to any country he wanted to visit in the world. All he had to do was point it out on the map, he and I would go together, and I would pay for everything! Not a bad deal, huh?

Well he graduated and so I bought a couple of plane tickets and rail passes for Japan and we hit the skies.

One of the first places that I wanted to take him was the Tokyo Tocho (東京都庁) because from my experience from the top one can see perhaps the best view of metropolitan Tokyo and even perhaps best of all: it's free. From the top, one can get a sense of the massive sprawl, disorder, and incomprehensible density of the city. Three-hundred and sixty degrees of gray concrete stretching out to the horizons.

This picture was the first attempt at going to the tower this trip. I had forgotten that it was closed on Sunday (oops! I should have known that!) But we had fun walking around Shinjuku none the less, plus I snapped a picture of this man enjoying the relative quiet of one of the the governmental building's plazas.