Tochou Tower

I think one of my favourite things about Tokyo is the sheer ridiculous grandiosity of it all:

“The next stop is the final stop, Shinjuku. Please change here for the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line, Toei Shinjuku Line, Toei Oedo Line, Keio Line, Keio New Line, Odakyu Odawara Line, Seibu Shinjuku Line, JR Yamanote Line, JR Saikyo Line, JR Chuo Line Local and JR Chuo Line Rapid Service. The door will open on the left.”

A lot of the time it feels like you’re floating around some neon-lit movie set of the future rather than a flesh and blood city of today. I know the Blade Runner analogy has been made a billion times but often it really feels like it.

We were wandering the seedy backstreets of Shinjuku, near the sleazy Kabuki-cho district. The heavy rain that had been falling since sundown had eased for a while to an intermittent sprinkle and the touts and hustlers had retreated inside, leaving black-suited businessmen toting clear plastic umbrellas free to swarm along the edges of the road unmolested. Punk-kids in striped socks ducked from doorway to doorway, not wanting to wet their gravity defying hair-styles. Neon corridors double in the puddles below. Tannhauser gate. Tears in the rain.

Taking the elevator to the 45th floor of the Tochou and looking out over the endless metropolis just hammered it home. Tokyo is not other cities, it is something else entirely.

Permalink Posted in Japan on Thursday September 1, 2005.