Some travel experiences are forgotten shortly after a tired and weary body arrives home, the resonance and meaning of the trip sucked out via travel itself, a smattering of memories vaguely remembered. But Tokyo is, quite simply, unforgettable.
One of the largest cities in the world with a population of about 12 million, as Japan's capital city and the financial nerve centre of the country, Tokyo is where it's at. With more than its fair share of academics, artists, writers, intelligentsia, business people and politicians, it's Japan's showcase for fashion, art, music, technology and advertising. Walking along the busy streets in the early morning are busy people with determined, purposeful looks on their faces. They have a mission, and work is crucial to their sense of integrity. While it is likely that they have just spent the past two hours in a crowded train (residential property in the centre of Tokyo is beyond the financial range of most workers), they seem to view the disruption as part and parcel of their regimented lives.
Yet, while typical Tokyo-ites work hard, they also play hard. Stress plays a huge factor in the psychological make-up of the average male worker. Traditionally, females are viewed as housewives and full-time mothers, and as such are treated as very small cogs in the wheels of industry. The typical white-collar company employee, therefore, works all the hours his boss requires. In most countries there is a cut-off time to go home to the family unit, even if you have to spend a further couple of hours to get there. But in Tokyo, the pressure for promotion is so intense that work is followed by several nights on the town drinking and carousing with fellow workers and superiors. Watching supposedly smart, besuited businessmen stumbling out of the high-rise bars to catch the last train home is a sorry sight, if an all too familiar one during my stay.
Consequently, Japan's Health and Welfare Ministry has recently called on the nation's fathers to become more involved in rearing their children, noting that working fathers spend an average of 17 minutes a day doing just that. Images emblazoned with the message "You don't call a man who doesn't care for his child a father" have already been posted up at subway stations in Tokyo and Osaka in an attempt to prick the male's guilty conscience. The intense pressure of work, some commentators contend, has contributed to Japan's steadily declining population growth. Japan's Health and Welfare Ministry has approved the sale of the male anti-impotence drug, Viagra, after a mere six months' debate. Yet it has only recently approved the female contraceptive pill, nine years after its application was first submitted and nearly four decades after its release in the West.
As if this attitude wasn't bad enough, even a cursory glance at the shelves in newsagents and corner shops throws light onto Japan's apparent paedophile fixation. Manga comics devoted to the explicit sexualisation of children and post-pubescent girls are widespread, while the city's red light district, Kabuki-cho (in the Shinjuku area), is perhaps the fiercest I've ever witnessed. The government is intent on cracking down on it, but it seemed to me a case of too little, too late.
But that's the social downside to an extraordinarily diverse and cultured country. Putting aside what, superficially at least, might not be seen by the visitor on a short trip, the best way to experience Tokyo is to blend in with the population, indigenous and tourist. If, like me, you have less than a week there, it's a good idea to be fussy about how and where you spend it. That said, there are several essential sights you'd be unwise to miss.
The first is Akihabara Electric Town, situated in the Chuo Dori area of the city. From diodes to DVDs, from resistors, transistors and capacitors to Gameboys and the tiniest mobile phones you've ever seen, Akihabara is street after street of more than 600 multi-level stores full of electronic gadgets, gizmos, gimcracks and gimmicks. Even at 11 a.m., there's a frenetic pace. An estimated 50,000 shoppers visit the area every weekday, a figure that doubles at the weekend. Depending on whether or not you're in the mood to buy something, more than three hours here is enough.
Roppongi is by far the city's most fashionable place to hang out. Tokyo-ites claim it is too trendy, noisy and commercialised, which means it's perfect for the knowing tourist. For those with a wallet full of flexible friends and a desire to please the bank manager, the best area to visit is Ginza. By day, it's an upmarket shopping area. By night, it's host to a dazzling array of restaurants and bars (a large number of which are to be found half way up multi-storey buildings). Perhaps Tokyo's most urbane and sophisticated area, it's also, inevitably, the most expensive.
But although Ginza is mostly a look-see place, it does have some of the best backstreet Blade Runner-style cafes you're ever likely to visit. Situated under the Yurakucho railway line, a long string of open-air cafes and restaurants provide one of the many experiences which are unique to Tokyo. Smells from nearby falling blossoms mingle with the aromas from food and alcohol, while steam from the kitchen heats people sitting at rickety tables.
Finally, if you are a secondhand clothes junkie (guilty, m'lud) a trip to Takeshita Dori, in the Harajuku region, is a must. Here, row upon row of useless but interesting and inexpensive clothes are stacked along a winding narrow lane that seems never to end. Shops called Sexy Dynamite and Nudy Boy are not what they seem to be, and Japlish language abounds in a variety of stalls that sell postcards and other totemic items of Japanese pop bands. My favourite piece of Japlish adorns a poster of one of the country's best-loved pop bands, The Kinki Kids. I quote verbatim: "Want to kidnap, you, with collecting wonderful wind."
Close by is the Meiji Jingu Shrine, the most venerable Shinto shrine in all of Tokyo. Somehow, in some indefinable way, it all makes perfect sense.