Tokyo at a glance! Roppongi Hills Observatory!!
No matter which city I travel to, I always go up to the city’s observatory to see the city’s scenery. A city with tall buildings lined up around a port. A city with a particularly bright center. From a city surrounded by mountains to a city with a view of the ocean in the distance. When you go up to the observatory, the topography, buildings, lights, and people of the city that you see seem to explain the city’s development.
A few days after deciding to travel to Japan, I asked a friend who had been to Japan several times in preparation for studying abroad in Japan where the best observatory in Tokyo was. There were many observatories in Tokyo, including Skytree, which I visited on the second day, Tokyo Tower, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building observatory. But what the heck, “Roppongi Hills is the best observatory in Tokyo!” My friend’s confident answer surprised me.
Unlike regular observatories where you can look down on the city through the glass windows on the top floor of a building, Roppongi Hills has the unique feature of allowing you to go up to the rooftop of the building and look down on the view for an additional 500 yen. I went past the art gallery in the middle of the building and the observation deck on the top floor, then took the elevator to the rooftop. When I went up the emergency stairs and arrived at the rooftop, I could see the wide open view of Tokyo in all directions. While the Tokyo Skytree observation deck focuses on the view of Tokyo centered around the Sumida River, the Roppongi Hills observation deck offers a variety of views of Tokyo, including the Sumida River, the view of Tokyo centered around Tokyo Tower, and the view of Tokyo with Tokyo Bay and Odaiba in the background.
I went up to the Roppongi Hills observation deck at around 4:30. The reason was to see both the daytime and sunset of Tokyo in one place. The sunset that day was around 5:40, so I endured the windy weather on the rooftop of the building for about an hour to an hour and thirty minutes. Was it because the sky was unusually blue that day? The Tokyo skyscrapers and Tokyo Tower, which easily exceeded several dozen stories, looked like models you would see in any museum. When I was starting to get tired of the blue sky and blue sea of Tokyo during the day, a scene that seemed like a lie began to unfold before my eyes. It was 30 minutes before and after sunset, the magic hour. The sky that had been blue until a few minutes ago was quickly dyed in the sun and glowed golden. As the sun gradually set in the west, the city began to get darker and darker, and in contrast, the golden sky began to reach its peak. Didn’t they say that when you see such a beautiful scenery, your body freezes? I don’t know if it was because I was defenseless and exposed to the cold wind for nearly an hour, or because I was faced with such a beautiful scenery that it was almost freezing, but I couldn’t help but freeze when I witnessed this scene with my own eyes.
A famous line from the movie “Your Name” came to mind.
It was just
an endlessly
beautiful scene, just like a dream.
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