Japan 7: Tokyo

Tokyo is difficult. It is difficult to move in, to interpret, to understand. Just when you think you are ready to describe it, just when you think you have soaked it in, you only come to realise that Tokyo has been soaking you in. It has been taking you in, gargling you about its mouth, bouncing you off its inner walls, tired disorientated, run down.
Tokyo will demand a piece of you before it ever reveals itself. You will need to live there a few years before you can begin to comprehend it, but even then . . .

A friend, who was in a similar situation, once told me this: "Tokyo harnesses the energy of the Pacific. It is a coastal city that moves with the immensity of the ocean".
There is a constant flow of people. I have been to larger cities than Tokyo, but never have I seen such a continuous pulse. To move through Tokyo is to be a rock in the midst of a never-ceasing set of waves. Exhuasted and eroded. But everyone in these waves is also a rock. You become a part of another person's wave - a part of their exhaustion.

Depsite this mass movement, Tokyo's energy never expresses itself in any single way. There is no unity. Tokyo is eclectic; A Japanese eclecticism. Just as the ocean reveals its power in each different wave, Tokyo's energy is dispersed among its disparate elements.