Thursday night saw the grand opening of the summer rooftop networking series, Tokyo Garden Party at Tokyu Honten in good ol’ Shibuya. I found out about the event through Twitter, but looks like they did a good job recruiting fellow roof-goers through Facebook and Mixi as well. The crowd was an interesting mix of well-known faces and low-profile Jane and John Does, but because the event had a heavy focus on the new media and creative industries, no matter how well-known or not, everyone I met was doing something really interesting. A refreshing change from the typical bankers-and-English-teachers group that seems to overwhelm most events in Tokyo.
Beer gardens in Tokyo don’t mess around, though, and after a mere 2 hours of “imbibulation,” Bunkamura staff busied themselves trying to push us out the door and into the street. The night was still young, however, and thus we moved from beer to expensive drinks and American munchies at some “dining bar” on the back streets of Center Gai.
And now photos:
When asked the typical networking ice-breaker, “What do you do?” about 60% of people responded “drink.” That’s the spirit!!
In a city overwhelmed by skyscraping behemoths, the amount of surface area occupied by rooftops has to be unbelievable. Definitely looking forward to exploring some of the more scenic oasises over the next few weeks. Cheers to the guys at Fusion Bureau and Set Japan for setting the whole thing up!
I was there! Saw plenty of people with camera.
“Drink”. I was way too sober to come up with anything as witty as that!