virtual {mo}ritz

I arrived in Tokyo last week but due to the sensory overload this city imposes on the brain, particularly on a geek’s brain, I needed some time to contemplate (read: process) my impressions before writing anything about it.

Let me start by saying that I feel utterly stupid, by now, for not having visited Japan earlier. My aunt is Japanese; through her I got to watch “Nauscaä of the Valley of the Wind” (in Japanese, w/o subtitles), when I was 11 years old, in 1985, the year after the movie came out. The images never left my head and I believe they were part of the reason I ended up pursuing a career in film.

Of course, I can’t really talk about Japan yet, since all I’ve seen is Tokyo for a week. But in short: Best food I’ve ever eaten outside of Italy.

A different and old culture that is alive and though borrows from the West, hasn’t (yet?) been sucked into the gray goo that American lifestyle turns everything into when it slowly becomes the predominant source of the average’s person’s Zeitgeist in any country.

After living in London for a year, Japan feels like the 22^nd century, still if one assumed that England is the “last third world country in Europe” (quote from a friend of mine who is a born & bred Londoner).

Japanese trains arrive on time, on the second, all the time. People are courteous verbally but also express this physically. English people, or Londoners, I shall say, I found to have little left of the proverbial dignity and courtesy this country was once famous for. A seat in the tube becomes free, everyone regardless of age, just darts for it. Even if there are old or disabled people or pregnant women around, no one cares.

In Japan it can take up to 15 seconds before a seat on the Tokyo metro is taken again because everyone checks thrice that no one else had the idea before them and that there are no parties around who would require a seat more than them. When the train arrives, people line up in two rows beside the doors, so people in the train can leave with ease. If you arrive late, you enter the train last, no one pushes in front.

The net? Well, let me quote my good friend Nick Petit here: “We got the ‘slowest’ connection available in Japan here and I downloaded the entire interweb yesterday, just in case”.

Food is available in every range of price but the quality I so far found always outstanding. Even Japanese ‘junk food’, like e.g. Okonomiyaki, leaves the kinds of McDonald’s & co light years behind.

I had some of the most amazing fish ever in my life this week and I already tasted so many entirely new things that I don’t know where to start. I feel like I have big smile burned into my face constantly, since I arrived in this country.

Tokyo has a pretty good air for the mega city it is. The streets are clean and even though this city is so big, I feel very much at home when arriving in small townish Ishikawa-dai, every day after work.

In general, houses are only tall when they flank main streets. In the side streets, rarely will you find the housing exceeding six floors, in many parts two or three floors even is the maximum. This helps tremendously. If ever you feel Tokyo was too overwhelming and you need to puff out, just leave the main street and walk into the back alleys for two minutes and you are instantly transported to a calmer and slower place.