28.8.05: sayonara, you mad marvel of a city ...

A few of you have asked me whether or not I've enjoyed Tokyo, so below is a somehwat random collection of thoughts and impressions.

The last few days have been a lot like immersion learning. Inevitably I didn't do all the things I'd planned, but I have covered a lot of ground, re-acquainting myself with things I vaguely remembered from my last visit to Japan (in 1986) and discovering stuff that I missed the first time out.

Now I'm preparing to pack up my things and move on. And much as I predicted, I'm SO not ready to leave this place. The vastness, the complexity, the endless strange juxtapositions of east and west, old and new, elegant and ugly ... I can't think of another city I've been to that throws anywhere near as much stimuli at you per minute as this one does. In spite of a few nitpicks and inconveniences, Tokyo had me by the throat within hours, and it hasn't let go.

Here are some things I'll miss about the Big T:

The ARCHITECTURE

I could just wander the streets here for weeks, particularly in the smaller suburban shopping and residential areas. There’s always a ton of stuff to look at.

Architecturally, the range of styles represented is almost compendium-like. Some you'd expect, others you wouldn't. This is especially true in suburbia, where cute little European chalet-style cottages crowd against elegant wooden houses with curling eaves. As well as the stylistic diversity, there's the striking contrast of gleaming prosperity vs. crumbling decrepitude which really lends Tokyo a lot of character.

ENGRISH

Okay, so I know it's a cheap laugh, and not very PC. But I just can't help smiling when I see a public ashtray marked Smorking and a bin nearby marked Dust, a chocolate bar called Crunky, a coffee product called Creap (short for creamy powder, apparently) and so on ... and on and on. The Japanese have such a talent for this. You see it everywhere here. I love it.

The FOOD

The word that comes most readily to mind here is "wow".

Seriously, there's so much good and/or intriguing food in Tokyo that it actually slows you down as you try to get around the city. I've continually found myself distracted en route to my next destination, as I stop to salivate over the things I recognise and ponder the things I don't. I could ramble for ages about some of the amazing (and pleasantly inexpensive) meals I’ve had in this town. Really, I could.

S’pose I’d better spare you that little tangent, though.

Something I do have to mention is the brilliantly quirky practice among restaurants of buying plastic facsimiles of the food they cook and hanging them in the front window. It’s a huge industry here; apparently in one suburb there’s a whole street lined with shops that sell plastic cuisine from around the world. And it means that, if you don’t quite know how to say what you want, you just take the counter staff out into the street and point at their window, to which they go “ahhhh” and bow a lot. I find myself bowing back, and really meaning it.

One last thing on this subject: I’m hoping my taste buds will be sent to Shibuya (see below) when I die. It's culinary heaven.

The JAPANESE ALPHABET

As some of you will know, Japanese writing is a mix of ornate Chinese Kanji figures and sleek home-grown characters. I just find the combination beautiful. It's especially cool to see it produced, whether by pen or paint brush. Yesterday, for example, I watched a cafe manager get out his paint box and write up a 'specials of the day' menu (or at least that's what it looked like). It was mesmerising.

I've had fun trying to work out the sounds and functions of a few characters, and memorising in Japanese script the names of railway stations I've frequented. I wish I had more time for this; it's great fun for a word nerd like me.

My ROOM

I've been staying on the south-west edge of town in a cheap'n'cheerful but very 'traditional' Ryokan (i.e. a guest house / hostel type thing). I love my room here. It has a 15" high table in one corner with a tea set on it and a legless chair, rice paper windows, a tatami floor (see below), a comfortable futon and minimalist wall-panelling in traditional style. It's extremely quiet and cool and private. I feel an instant 'lift' every time I go into it. It's just one of those spaces that have an invitingly harmonious air about them.

SAFETY

Simply put, I feel safer as a tourist in Tokyo than as a resident in Sydney.

SHIBUYA

This suburb is a seemingly endless profusion of food outlets and cooking aromas, but it's a magnet for other reasons too. Shibuya is relentlessly bright, brash and loud, a sea of bill posters and neon and faddish consumption and traffic splaying in all directions – all the things I find unpleasant about the 'focal points' of Sydney. Yet somehow it's immensely cool and compelling. I went twice, and was tempted to go back again last night. Only a mini-festival in the street outside my Ryokan convinced me to stay local.

There are also way more music shops per square kilometre in Shibuya than anywhere else I’ve been. Didn’t have the budget for CD shopping, so I don’t know if they’re any good. People and noise spill from them continually, though, adding still more bounding energy to the general overload.

For those of you who saw Lost in Translation, I have to throw this in as well: remember the scene that played out in front of a skyscraper with digitally rendered dinosaurs walking across the front of it? Well, that building is the first thing you see through the enormous entrance window at Shibuya Station. (Or at least, I'm pretty sure it's the same one; both times I was there, it had elephants rather than dinosaurs on it.) So I got to have an "oh look, I just walked onto a location used in a cool film" moment. I like those.

The TALENT

*ahem*

There's quite a lot to see on the Tokyo subway. 'Nuff said.

TATAMI

Once again, undoubtedly familiar to some of the folk who are reading this. It's the straw matting used in traditional Japanese flooring. When I was shown to my room in the Ryokan the smell of tatami hit me as the door opened, and I instantly re-cognised it from my previous holiday in Japan. I'd forgotten just how good it smells. How can I put it? Let' see ... if you could make calm contentment into a fragrance, this would probably be it.

So now tatami is officially my favourite smell in the world (tied for first place with freshly brewed coffee, of course). Looks and feels pretty wonderful, too.

The TRAINS

What can I say? They work.

Actually, they do more than just work. They're remarkable. Every Cityrail employee from middle management upwards should be taken from their desk for a few days a year and tied to the front of a Tokyo subway train, so they can experience what First World public transport is supposed to be like.

There's a lot more, but I've already gone on for ages and I think all of you who haven’t already should come here and see for yourself. So I'll leave the list of fun Tokyo stuff, at least for now. Moscow had better be pretty darn good, is all I can say!