Roppongi
Roppongi ( Japanese 六 本 木 , literally: six trees ) is part of the Minato District , Tokyo , with the Roppongi Junction as its center. In Roppongi, the Roppongi subway station is located as a stop for the subways of the Ōedo line of the Toei subway and the Hibiya line of the Tōkyō metro .
nightlife
Roppongi is geographically close to the government district and thus many embassies, a US Army barracks and administration as well as a large number of corporate headquarters of internationally active companies. Therefore, after the Second World War , especially from the 1960s, it developed into a central meeting place for foreigners and internationally oriented, young, mostly rich Japanese.
Roppongi's nightlife reached its peak in the bubble economy phase in the second half of the 1980s, when a large number of discos and bars attracted the entertainment elite. However, with the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, many of the discos and clubs fell into a crisis. The Velfarre , which has since been demolished and was inaugurated at the end of the boom phase, was outstanding and was the largest disco in Asia at the time, with outstanding lighting and sound systems. With the closure of the Vanilla in March 2007, the last big club in this area disappeared. Nevertheless, Roppongi has always been shaped by many smaller clubs and discos, which means that it has the third largest concentration of discos and bars in Tokyo after Kabukichō in Shinjuku - with a lot of red light district - and Shibuya - with many offers for the young .
The politicians of the Minato district, in which Roppongi is located, are striving to transform the district more and more into a business and shopping district and to eradicate the image of a entertainment district. This line, in conjunction with the hard hand policy against drugs and prostitution of the governor of the Tokyo capital prefecture , Shintarō Ishihara , who has been in power since 1999 , has led to the fact that since 2006 there have been no discos with licenses for dance events after two o'clock at night. In practice, however, hardly anything has changed; the countless clubs and discos, like the celebrity disco Lexington Queen, have either declared themselves to be self-proclaimed "member" clubs (which can only be recognized by "Members Only" signs at the entrance) or they have, like the Gas Panic clubs , a few tables and stools set up on the dance floor, which are supposed to prevent the dancing, but in practice are simply danced around.
Shopping and office complexes
Roppongi received a new impetus in 2003 from the Roppongi Hills complex, which cost almost 2.5 billion euros . The central Mori Tower with a height of 238 meters and 54 floors houses the Mori art museum , the Virgin Toho large cinema, a large number of luxury restaurants and branded stores as well as the offices of many well-known companies such as Goldman Sachs , Lehman Brothers , J- WAVE , Konami , Rakuten , Livedoor and Yahoo Japan. Attached to it are the Grand Hyatt Hotel Tokyo , the TV Asahi studios and two high-rise buildings with luxury apartments.
A further step was the completion of the Mitsui Group's Tokyo Midtown complex in March 2007. While Roppongi Hills is characterized by its luxurious-looking construction and high rents and has increasing problems finding tenants, the Midtown Project is more attractively priced Rents and shops designed.
Both complexes are connected directly to the subway network of the Hibiya line and Ōedo line via the Roppongi subway station .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The Year of Germany in Japan 2005 ( Memento from July 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 35 ° 39 ′ 36 " N , 139 ° 43 ′ 48" E