The Lawson on the Top Floor

I hadn’t meant to go up that high. I’d ducked into Hikarie mostly to use the restroom—maybe wander the basement levels and touch things I couldn’t afford, as one often does in places like that.

Hikarie, for those who haven’t been, is a glass-and-steel tower that rises like a shard of light above Shibuya. It’s sleek, modern, and designed to be many things at once—shopping complex, art gallery, office space, gourmet maze, event hall, quiet retreat, and hyper-curated lifestyle display. A vertical city for people who move fast but still want beauty in the in-between.

You enter straight from the station, and the hum of Shibuya’s chaos is swallowed almost immediately by soft jazz piped through invisible speakers. Escalators take you up like conveyor belts through different strata of intent: floors of artisan kitchen knives, minimalist home goods, niche perfumes, concept cafes with velvet chairs and matcha lattes that arrive with edible flowers balanced on top.

It’s the kind of place that wants you to believe in a more elegant version of yourself.

I wasn’t there to buy anything. Just to walk through, float a little, let my mind rest in the spaces between things.

But somehow, I kept going up. Past the department store calm, past the galleries and open atriums, until I ended up on the top floor.

And that’s where I saw it.

A Lawson. A small, quietly glowing convenience store tucked into a corner like a secret—offering the same onigiri, same plastic-wrapped sandwiches, same Vitamin C drinks and aluminum-wrapped nikuman as the one next to your neighborhood train station. It felt out of place, and yet absolutely right.

Next to it was a terrace. One of those rooftop spaces where the city falls away beneath you. The kind of view you forget you’re allowed to stand in front of without paying for a ticket.

And that’s where I saw them.

A young man and a girl. Early twenties, maybe. He wore a grey hoodie pulled slightly over his head, the kind that softens with age and holds the shape of someone trying. In one hand, a 100 yen onigiri. In the other, nothing. She stood beside him with a custard crème crepe, wrapped carefully in its paper sleeve, holding it like something she didn’t want to finish too fast.

They weren’t talking. They were just watching Shibuya move.

And there’s something about that—watching the city from above—that strips people down. They weren’t checking their phones. They weren’t posing. They were just there.

And in that stillness, I saw it: hope.

Not loud, inspirational hope. Not the kind made for motivational posters. But the kind that hums beneath your ribs when you’re trying to build a life.

He wanted to succeed. You could feel it in the way he held himself, even as he rested. The way he watched the city below like it held a future he hadn’t quite stepped into yet. Not fame. Not money. Just something better than what he had. Something he could build with his own hands. Stability. Health. A kind of freedom.

She wasn’t rushing him. She wasn’t asking for more. Her body language said: this is enough. For now.

And maybe that’s the kind of love that survives. The kind that lives in shared onigiri and rooftop silence. In being seen. In being allowed to dream quietly, together.

I stood there a while. Long enough to finish the tea I’d bought out of curiosity more than thirst. Long enough to feel that strange, aching kind of gratitude for strangers you’ll never know.

I didn’t take a photo.

I didn’t need to.

Because I knew I’d remember it—not the view, but the feeling. That moment when two people looked out at a hard, glittering world and quietly decided not to be afraid of it.

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What You Learn in a Place Like That

You go into a place like Hikarie expecting design and polish. A curated experience. Something removed from the messiness of real life.

But sometimes, at the top, in the corners, where no one is really paying attention, you find something far more important.

You find two people eating convenience store food, watching a city that might never give them everything they want—but still daring to want anyway.

And in that moment, you remember:

Hope doesn’t have to be loud.
Success doesn’t have to be fast.
And the future doesn’t need to be glamorous to be worth reaching for.

Sometimes it’s enough to just keep standing beside someone with a crepe in one hand and a view in the other.

And to believe, quietly, that you’ll both find a way.