The sake available at Tokyo Metropolitan Office is X X X X X

 

Good day!
Thank you very much for visiting this blog!
Today, I’d like to write about a day when I visited the observation room of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office.

 

○ On the way back from a seminar

The day was a Thursday in early June (well, there was only June 7th, which applies to it^^; )
I was in Shinjuku to take a seminar about “Registration of Chiefs of Money Lending Operations”

I have a license to become “a chief of money lending operations”.
The people, including me, who have this license and have registered themselves to the nation are required to take a seminar which is provided by the law once in three years to renew the registrations.

If they don’t want to renew their registrations, they don’t have to take the seminar, and the license doesn’t disappear even if they don’t renew the registrations.
I was in Shinjuku to take “Registration Seminar” to renew my registrations on that day.

Many people might image TV dramas or cartoons such as “Naniwa Kinyudo” or “Yamikin Ushijima-kun” (both describe severe problems between lenders and renters) when they hear words of “money lending business”.

The past aside, in the present Japan, if a company lend money at high interest or try to collect the money in harsh ways, it is regarded as illegal, and the company will be arrested or forced to close their business.
In the seminar, the participants learn such things.

By the way, a word which should be one of the most famous ones about lending money is “joint surety”.
The law about this will be revised in 2020, and the lenders and renters will be obligated to make an agreement about how much money the joint surety has to pay before finalizing the contract, otherwise the sign of the joint surety will be ineffective.

In addition, the lenders and renters will have to inform the repayment capacity and the repayment state to the joint surety.
The law is improving to avoid problems upon lending and borrowing money.

The seminar was an all day-seminar starting at 9:30 in the morning and finishing at 5:30 in the evening.
The participants including me were too tired to care about anything after the seminar.

There are many nasty things about money problems in TV dramas or cartoons. They are sometimes exaggerated, but similar things were actually happening in Japan before.

The system of “chiefs of money lending operations” was made to prevent violent money problems radically.
It is understandable that the registered people are enforced to do hard works to maintain the effects.

 

It is on the way back that I stopped by the observation room of Tokyo Metropolitan Government office.
The time was around 6 in the evening when I arrived there.

I also visited there for business purposes in last December and January.
I saw a long queue for the observation floor then.
I got interested in it, but didn’t try it because I was on the way back to my office.

On the other hand, the day of today’s article was free after the seminar, so I decided to try the observation room to find something to write in this blog.

I knew that there was a restaurant on the same floor of the observation room
I also wanted to check if they had Sake, and if they had some, what kinds of sake they had.
I thought that it should be a good Trivia.

 

○　The observation room of Metropolitan Office

The observation room of Metropolitan Government office consists of the south room and the north room.
I had been to the north when I was a student, so I tried to go to the south. However, the south room was open until 17:30, so I went to the north instead.

I headed an elevator at the right of the entrance on the ground floor.

This photo was taken after I came back from the observation floor.
There wasn’t a queue.
When I was going up the floor, there was a line of people to a green sign board saying “The North Observation Room”.

There were more foreign people than Japanese people.
I could feel that foreign visitors are increasing as we see in news on papers and TV.

I waited for about 5 minutes, and had baggage checking.
Then I took an elevator to the observation room.
A guide staff kept a low bow until the door closed, saying “Enjoy your time.”

People of my generation or older should have an image, “government people = bossy”.
But now the people at the government offices are very polite and generous.

For example, when I went to the office to get a copy of my resident’s card, the people welcomed me politely and they used words such as “Hello, how can I help you?”
Or “Next, please. Thank you for waiting.” like other normal shops.

I was impressed enough by the change in the services at offices, and I got even more impressed by the elevator staff’s polite actions.
I felt a clear gap from the old days.

While I was moved by their service, I also thought that it was more than enough.
They open their building’s floor without charge, so the visitors are already receiving a good deal.

I worry that some visitors might misunderstand the situation and behave impolitely if the service is too much.
I always think that a person should act kindly to anyone no matter which he or she is a customer or a staff, for the position changes when the occasion is different.

 

○ The view from the observation room

Well, I got the elevator and arrived at the observation floor after 30 seconds.
The door opened, a wide view would appear in front of me…

…… wasn’t like that.
There was a short distance from the elevator to the observation spot, so the visitors had to walk a little.

The photo above is the one of the west direction.
This is the south.

The east.

There were Skytree, Tokyo Tower, Docomo Tower, and Meiji Jingu Shrine in the east, and I could see them clearly.
But it’s not so clear in the photo^^;
I put notes in the photo to make it easy to see.

 

○ Nihonshu available at the observation room

On the observation floor, there is not only the observation room, but also a shop and a restaurant.
After I enjoyed the view enough, I checked those other spots.

This is the shop.

In this shop, there were Olympic goods and Tokyo souvenirs.
In addition, maybe for foreign visitors, there were Ukiyoe pictures of Hokusai’s “Fugaku Sanjurokkei”, and figure dolls of famous Japanese characters such as Dora*mon and Gund*m, and somehow, Star W*rs characters.

I understood about Ukiyoe and Japanese characters, but I didn’t understand why Star Wa*s dolls had to be there.
Indeed, many Star W*rs dolls are sold in Akihabara……, is it the reason?

Beside them, there were more goods such as T-shirts with Chinese characters.
Every time I see this kind of T-shirts, I wonder why they are good, and if foreign visitors who buy them understand the meaning (especially, the ones sold at certain chain shops…).

Well, many Japanese people wear clothes with English words.
English speakers from outside of Japan should be feeling the same thing as ours.

 

And, this is the restaurant I wanted to see.

The name is “Good-View-Tokyo”.
According to the website of Tokyo Metropolitan Government, they have “light meals such as pasta and coffee, and other various drinks”.
I couldn’t check if their main menus were French or Italian, but they had “a meat dish of the day” and appetizers, and they seemed a proper restaurant.

I checked the menu book outside the entrance to see if they had sake.

Yes, they had one!
“Yoshinogawa Taruzake”!

The complete title of this article is,
“The sake available at Tokyo Metropolitan Office is ……‘Yoshinogawa Taruzake’”

I made the picture above and the style of the title like those of a famous TV show which deals many Trivia.
I’m surprised that it’s already been 12 years since it stopped.

I competed my mission, and left the floor without going in the restaurant.
Why didn’t I try the restaurant?
That is because I wasn’t brave enough to enter the lovely restaurant alone.
I hope that I will be able to try it with someone ( ￣▽￣)

 

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