Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "writeback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+writeback" bit from the end of the URL.

Tue, 15 Jun 2004

Everything you ever wanted to know about Shibuya but never dared ask

The friendly face on the left hand side could be the new employee of the month, just with the smile he's showing in this picture, but there's more than that.

This man is actually Toshitake Kuwahara (I have to admit it was the first time for me to hear that name too), he's the current mayor of Shibuya, craddle of Japanese fashion for teenagers, and he had the good idea to make a website in English for the 11,000 foreigners living in Shibuya-ku, in Tokyo.

From the list of sport centers in Shibuya to the schedule of the shuttle bus going to the main points in Shibuya, not to mention the various instructions to follow in case of administrative formalities, the site contains a handful set of information, which took me a few clicks to find in google.

The site is apparently quite recent (at least the English version of it) and deserves to be advertised to get a higher rank in the search engines!

There, now that I've done my duty as a citizen of Shibuya, let's mention that the name of that shuttle bus above is the Hachiko Bus.

Everyone who has been going out to Shibuya knows this place, next to the station, that hundreds of people set as their meeting point everyday.

The story tells that a University teacher going by the name of Eizaburo Ueno adopted a dog and named him Hachi in the 1920's.
The dog used to accompany its master to the station every morning and was welcoming him in front of the station every evening, year after year.

When the professor eventually passed away, the dog kept going to the station to wait for his master for another 10 years, until he died himself, at the exact location where he had been waiting for his master for all those years.

Japanese who were touched by such fidelity erected a statue for that faithful dog and placed it where Hachiko used to wait for his master.

That story is over famous to people coming to Tokyo, but I've just realized I had never told it in this weblog.