Several years ago, probably in part due to the olympics, Shibuya began a huge re-development of several areas around the station. One of those new developments is Miyashita Park.
Miyashita Park is behind Shibuya station towards Harajuku. When I first came here 20 years ago this area was a soccer park with a parking garage and other buildings. At one point in time the park was lined with blue-sheet, homeless encampments. It was a bit of a dirty area and most people avoided it.
(source - Rs1421, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Then sometime in 2010 a small redevelopment was done doing away with the homeless encampments, but with this latest redevelopment they started from scratch. It's now a 4 story shopping mall, hotel and an outdoor park on the roof.
The first floor of the complex is part shopping and part restaurants. The restaurants are throw back to the Showa era, Japan's "Golden Years" after WWII.
Day.
Night.
The shopping is fairly high end with stores like Dior, Prada, Louis Vitton supported by pricey up and coming brands.
There is one reason to go into the mall though, the Kit Kat Chocolatier! I'll save that for a later post though.
Going up to the rooftop is free. It's reached by several flights of stairs, escalators and/or elevators located at various places along the mall. The south end is the closet to the station and it has both elevators and escalators.
If you come in from the south the first thing you will see is the skatepark.
It's a series of bowls all connected together. The fee to use the park is quite reasonable, $6 for 2hours. I didn't see any additional fees for insurance or anything, but you most likely will need to wear pads and a helmet. Those may be available for an additional fee, but most skaters know once you sweat in your pads that stink doesn't go away, so you probably want to bring your own if you can.
Moving on, just past the skate park there is this cool climbing wall.
It's a small wall with a padded base incase you fall so even people like me can try it out. I saw smaller children climbing when I was there last time which was really cool. I think the fee to use this is also really cheap, a few dollars.
Just beyond the climbing wall is a beach volleyball area. Sorry, I didn't take a picture of it unfortunately, but you can kinda see it in the picture above.
Past all of that is where the park begins. There is a small building to the left to pay for rental time at the fee areas as well as bathrooms. The building in the distance is a hotel with access to the park.
There are also lots of benches to sit at. In the picture below you can see the benches along the right side. Those benches offer nice views of the city below. They are also inhabited by groups of young girls taking selfies and videos so finding a spot to sit isn't so easy.
A grassy area runs down the center of the park, but it was closed due to covid, or at least that's what they said. The grass looked pretty beat up and it seemed like it could use a lot less feet trampling around on it.
Then there was a robot lawn mower.
I watched it for a few minutes and it came right up to me like a lost dog.
I got the feeling it wanted me to take it home. Unfortunately I have no grass for it to mow so it would have had a meaningless life if I was to take it home.
Miyashita is a nice, new development free to the public. It's very close to Shibuya station so getting there is easy. Right next to it is Nonbei Yokocho, the old style Japanese pubs that seat about 5-6 people. This whole area is adding new life to what was once the backwater of Shibuya and is worth a visit.
Getting there from Shibuya station, Hachiko.
Alternatively, you can come in from the green area closer to the station on the map. That's where the skatepark is.
