Superficial comments on Tokyo

I landed in Tokyo early Saturday morning (20th February) and immediately began the unreliable art of summarising a country and a civilisation on the basis of a few day's visit. I am not alone in doing this. I have watched numerous reports on Japan from journalists who, like me, do not speak Japanese, know little of its history and are unfamiliar with its culture and complexity. Their reports always feature a film from a Shinkansen (bullet train), shots of crowded streets with neon signs, and dark tales of a declining economy, conformity under challenge and so on. I suspect these opinions were not based on observing what was around them, but on repeating what they had heard from other journalists and on what they thought their audience expected to hear.

My superficial impressions differ in being based, where possible, on what I actually saw. I saw a city that is almost entirely made of concrete but is not a jungle. There are none of the obvious signs of personal dereliction found in many European and North American cities. People are remarkably polite and tolerant of strangers. Far from dull conformity, people (especially young people) express their individuality in their clothes and personal style. The City is far from beautiful, but it works as a city. There is a phenomenally efficient public transport system, little sign of public disorder, and the streets are clean. Oh - and there are the best neon signs I have seen anywhere in the world.