6 Spots to Get a Bird’s Eye View of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing blog.gaijinpot.com

One of the best-known symbols of Tokyo is the busy pedestrian scramble outside Shibuya station. Virtually anyone who’s ever come to the capital has probably been drawn to it at some point. People refer to it variously as Hachiko Crossing, Shibuya Crossing or the Shibuya Scramble. Whatever you want to call it (for the sake of convenience, we’ll follow the example of local businesses here and call it the Scramble), it’s a true tourist magnet.

The chaotic free-for-all of foot traffic, with people zigzagging every which way to get across the street, almost seems tailor-made to form an establishing shot of the metropolis on film. In our Lost in Translation guide to Tokyo, we looked at one well-worn spot for watching the Scramble: namely, the second floor of the Starbucks in Shibuya’s Q-Front building. To encourage a high turnaround of customers, the ubiquitous coffee chain only serves “Tall” size drinks at this location.