Thanks Sofia Coppola…

It’s very common for me that films not only open my eyes to the outside world, but inspire me enough to explore and visit a location in real life. The Shibuya Crossing is a place I probably would have ventured to anyway as it comes up often in searches of “things to do in Tokyo,” but I must attribute my desire to see it to the 2003 Oscar winner, “Lost in Translation.”

It’s too much to get into the whole story, but the short of it, the 25 word pitch: two Americas are in Tokyo, Japan, for respective purposes, and find comfort and relief from their existential crises thanks to their chance meeting and friendship. (That was exactly 25 words and I didn’t plan that. Wow.) It stars Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray (who got an Oscar nom) and has long been one of my favorite films. No film is perfect and I won’t get into its flaws, but Lost In Translation always contributed to my desires to visit Tokyo. There is a great scene with Scarlett Johansson where she visits and experiences the famous intersection, The Shibuya Crossing, hence my bold heading thanking the film’s director Sofia Coppola (who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay).

In person, I finally saw and experienced its reason for fame: it is said that during any one traffic light cycle that thousands of pedestrians pass by one another from five different directions. Thanks to Typhoon Hagibis, this number was probably only in the high hundreds, but it was still something to behold:

Time lapse

It’s probably been done a million times but I had to create my own rendition: the activity of the Shibuya Crossing begs to be turned into a time lapse video. I was thankful to hang around long enough to discover two viewing vistas and create a couple of videos (together below). There are plenty of locations to view the Crossing from above and I chose to use the viewing deck at Mag’s Park. The second angle is from the 2nd floor of the Starbucks right at the intersection. Mag’s Park was a small fee (300 Yen) and the Starbucks is free, though they prefer you at least get a coffee:

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