Tokyo was a whirlwind. We were so happy to get to spend time with so many friends and family. After a lot of chatting and planning my folks made it to Tokyo for ten great days. It was a weird and wonderful experience to see them in Tokyo, and we hope they had a great trip they'll remember for a long time to come.
Tokyo was a very different part of our trip. It was the only place in Asia that I had been prior to our travels, and coming back to a place changes everything. The first time I was there was with Rodney in 2006, and I was like a kid who had landed in 2055. It literally felt like visiting the future.
This time around Tokyo felt like an alternate reality more than traveling forward in time. Rodney has visited Tokyo a bunch of times, and her experiences coupled with those related by Molly and Andrew and our new friend Hannah provided a small window into a place which I will never truly understand. Molly also recommended the excellent book "Tokyo Vice" which further shed some light. Our time in Tokyo and all of the collected anecdotes we heard and read allowed me to see Tokyo as real. On my first visit, I was so enamored of my surroundings that it was hard to see anything but a futuristic fairyland.
Tokyo was a very different part of our trip. It was the only place in Asia that I had been prior to our travels, and coming back to a place changes everything. The first time I was there was with Rodney in 2006, and I was like a kid who had landed in 2055. It literally felt like visiting the future.
This time around Tokyo felt like an alternate reality more than traveling forward in time. Rodney has visited Tokyo a bunch of times, and her experiences coupled with those related by Molly and Andrew and our new friend Hannah provided a small window into a place which I will never truly understand. Molly also recommended the excellent book "Tokyo Vice" which further shed some light. Our time in Tokyo and all of the collected anecdotes we heard and read allowed me to see Tokyo as real. On my first visit, I was so enamored of my surroundings that it was hard to see anything but a futuristic fairyland.
There's a lot about Japanese society that seems ridiculous and arbitrary and surprisingly inefficient. (See Rodney's post about trying to free ourselves from the shackles of picnic trash for a tiny microcosm.) Much seems like it will need to change as Japan feels cut off from the rest of the world in a way that is no longer sustainable in an increasingly global world.
None of that had any real bearing on our time there except perhaps the realization that Tokyo is an insider town in truest sense. If you live in New York for years (not even a lot of years), you're a New Yorker and you will almost certainly be an insider in whatever social or cultural sphere you choose to roam in. Tokyo doesn't feel that way. I believe that, as a Westerner – as any non-Japanese person, for that matter – you could live in Tokyo for years, decades and you'd still never really be an insider. There will always be a separation as long as a you are not Japanese.
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