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Belly of the Whale – Yurakucho Forum

I’ve wanted to shoot the interior of the Yurakucho International Forum for some time, but only now got round to doing it- pushed ahead by a meeting with international jet-setter and club photographer Joshua Dearing. We did a photowalk around the structure, then through Ginza, finishing up in the big Starbucks where we talked plenty about extending life and Apple’s next product release.

HDR of 3 RAW images stopped 2 f’s apart, with Color Efex Pro applied.

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Kabuki-za, Kyobashi

The Kabuki-za is a fancy-pants theater in Ginza for the screening of Kabuki- a highly stylized and traditional (read ‘boring to most people’) form of storied stage performance. The Kabuki-za is famous as the principal theater for this kind of show in Tokyo- with a long and varied history dating all the way back to 1924.

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Shizuoka Shimbun Building, Shimbashi

The headquarters of the Shizuoka newspaper in Shimbashi, Tokyo, is another Kenzo Tange building- he of Fuji Terebi and the Tocho. It resembles nothing so much as a giant mutated baobab tree, vivid rust-colored and sprouting fat boughs that elide in stubby endings, on one side its groping knubs reaching out to latch onto the closest building.

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Gundam Building, Shibuya

The Gundam building in Shibuya rests on its axled haunches like the ultimate guard-dog, anxiously awaiting the day it will be called into service to leap-frog into battle to protect its city, tackling Mothra or some other evil invading alien with its fire-eyes and laser tail.

It also keeps a close eye on those ’satellites’ launched out of North Korea, ready to leap up and catch them in its big red mouth as if they were frisbees.

Mobile suit, baby!

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Asahi Flame, Asakusa

The Asahi ‘Flame’ building on the Asakusa banks of the Sumida river is infamous in Tokyo for its eponymous ‘flame’, a huge golden piece of art juxtaposed atop the obelisk-like black building; intended to represent the freedom and grace of a good head of foam on a glass of Asahi beer. It has however been dubbed by many the ‘flying golden turd’ or ‘golden tadpole’; another sad instance of too much art-like sensibility and not enough common sense.

Asahi ‘Flame’ Building.

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Tokyo Big Sight, Odaiba

Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba is one of the biggest exhibition spaces in Tokyo, featuring two huge halls East and West plus several conference rooms and a 1,100 seater auditorium in the main building- which is curiously shaped out of four upside-down pyramids.

Why is it shaped out of four upside-down pyramids? Nobody knows. I suppose this is another case of function being completely unrelated to form, with form taking off on a flight of fancy to Never-Neverland. The last time we saw this was with the Edo-Tokyo museum, which got me ranting about WASTE! and VACUOUS DESIGN! and GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION!

But not this time. Tokyo Big Sight, meh. I dig it- no need to rant. It’s a conference space, the function is amorphous, let them eat cake!

Amorphous function equals inverted quadra-pyramidal form. Obvious.

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