A very
Lost In Translation scene in Tokyo's Shibuya district. There's
a bronze statue of a dog just out of the frame that the guidebooks
say is a "popular meeting spot for young people," which
sounded fishy to me. But then we met a friend of a friend of Anna's
for coffee, and she indeed told us to meet at her at the dog statue.
It's not a particularly remarkable statue, and I don't know what
special significance this dog has, but it's an invaluable navigation
point, since this is the most bewilderingly mazelike and visually
assaultive place I've ever been to, including Times Square. At
least Times Square is laid out in a grid with sequentially numbered
streets and buildings. Shibuya follows Japan's maddening tradition
of numbering buildings in the order in which they were constructed.
Not like building numbers would help you much here.
