A Date with Tokyo
It is unimaginable that I am still in Singapore at this time of the year. I would usually be somewhere abroad.
Last year this time, I was in Tokyo. It was the end of autumn and the beginning of winter; cold but not chilly, and the towering skyscrapers of Ginza, Shinjuku, Akihabara and Shibuya districts sheltered me from the occasional wintry wind. Japan, or rather Tokyo, presents a most absorbing study in high living and fashion. The Japanese drama series have all created this hype about a metropolis teeming with beautiful people leading beautiful lives. To be frank, most of the people I saw on the streets of Tokyo were beautiful. Not that they were endowed with angelic or handsome features, for not many were good-looking, but they were clearly experts in packaging themselves into elegant confident people, both genders. Brows plucked, hair styled and showing off the best of their wardrobes, the commuters striding swiftly towards the numerous trains at Shinjuku station exuded a complete confidence of a people who knew that they looked good and were good. Even the many touts milling around the less savory districts of Tokyo were stylistically arrayed, not quite differentiable from the sales assistants of the upscale luxury stores of Ginza.
This widespread attentiveness towards the aesthetic ratio permeates all aspects of Japanese life. The bold architectural styles of buildings, the numerous public parks, the temples, the museums, the presentation of dishes, the storefront windows, the most advance product designs of electronics and accessories, and the lovely little paper packages that they would carefully wrap the tiniest of your purchase in, and the list goes on. And every shopping experience, with or without purchases, threatens to deliver one into consumer bliss. It makes one willing part with our yen, and to look forward to the next purchase. Even a take-away purchase of a single cream puff which I bought at a train station came complete with a petite packet of packed ice, a small plastic fork, and layers of textured wrapping paper. I felt positively criminal just to peel away the layers to fulfill my impulsive craving for a light snack.
I witnessed a Christmas celebrated in lavish style in Tokyo. The stores paraded their entire collections amidst a Christmas splendor of deco. Shoppers exuded the romance of a northern wintry Christmas in their furs and coats. Christmas trees lining pedestrian platforms and large walkways heralded the season’s arrival. The fairyland lightings outside the 7-storey Takashimaya departmental store thronged with couples and families. Not too distant away, across the railway station and tracks, just beside a Starbucks café, a carefully constructed lawn of lit trees, pebbled paths and a musical bridge complete with a blinking star elicited appreciative oos and ahs from all. And it was not just simply stringing rows and rows of coloured lights across the main roads, or streaming lights down from the trees. Every Christmas decoration, or should I say presentation, presented an artistic concept, and vyed to better that of the neighbouring building or store. It could get a trifle chilly at night in Tokyo, but it seemed just right when coupled with the sublime aesthetics of these Christmas lightings and decorations. I would not have wished it otherwise.
I have other fond memories of that trip last year. Following a radio programme outside a see-through radio studio at Odaiba, browsing through a secondhand CD shop in the cold December night at Ikebukuro, sitting at the Starbucks café opposite Shibuya Station and looking down at the massive endless crowd below, walking up to Shibuya 109, and trying to walk on the spur of the moment from Harajuku to Shinjuku – that was a folly not to be repeated. And there was that river stroll I wanted to make visiting the bridges of Tokyo – I did not manage to complete that, having gone in the wrong direction from Shiodome that last evening. I had then told myself that I would leave that as a little regret of the visit, and to assign it to my next visit to Tokyo.
I had planned on returning to Tokyo this holiday, but I guess my condition really does not permit that now. But I like this feeling, that of having an unaccomplished desire, a yearning. It’s sort of a little bittersweet, and it is like that unfulfilled holiday that I would look forward to.
I would visit Tokyo again next December.
Last year this time, I was in Tokyo. It was the end of autumn and the beginning of winter; cold but not chilly, and the towering skyscrapers of Ginza, Shinjuku, Akihabara and Shibuya districts sheltered me from the occasional wintry wind. Japan, or rather Tokyo, presents a most absorbing study in high living and fashion. The Japanese drama series have all created this hype about a metropolis teeming with beautiful people leading beautiful lives. To be frank, most of the people I saw on the streets of Tokyo were beautiful. Not that they were endowed with angelic or handsome features, for not many were good-looking, but they were clearly experts in packaging themselves into elegant confident people, both genders. Brows plucked, hair styled and showing off the best of their wardrobes, the commuters striding swiftly towards the numerous trains at Shinjuku station exuded a complete confidence of a people who knew that they looked good and were good. Even the many touts milling around the less savory districts of Tokyo were stylistically arrayed, not quite differentiable from the sales assistants of the upscale luxury stores of Ginza.
This widespread attentiveness towards the aesthetic ratio permeates all aspects of Japanese life. The bold architectural styles of buildings, the numerous public parks, the temples, the museums, the presentation of dishes, the storefront windows, the most advance product designs of electronics and accessories, and the lovely little paper packages that they would carefully wrap the tiniest of your purchase in, and the list goes on. And every shopping experience, with or without purchases, threatens to deliver one into consumer bliss. It makes one willing part with our yen, and to look forward to the next purchase. Even a take-away purchase of a single cream puff which I bought at a train station came complete with a petite packet of packed ice, a small plastic fork, and layers of textured wrapping paper. I felt positively criminal just to peel away the layers to fulfill my impulsive craving for a light snack.
I witnessed a Christmas celebrated in lavish style in Tokyo. The stores paraded their entire collections amidst a Christmas splendor of deco. Shoppers exuded the romance of a northern wintry Christmas in their furs and coats. Christmas trees lining pedestrian platforms and large walkways heralded the season’s arrival. The fairyland lightings outside the 7-storey Takashimaya departmental store thronged with couples and families. Not too distant away, across the railway station and tracks, just beside a Starbucks café, a carefully constructed lawn of lit trees, pebbled paths and a musical bridge complete with a blinking star elicited appreciative oos and ahs from all. And it was not just simply stringing rows and rows of coloured lights across the main roads, or streaming lights down from the trees. Every Christmas decoration, or should I say presentation, presented an artistic concept, and vyed to better that of the neighbouring building or store. It could get a trifle chilly at night in Tokyo, but it seemed just right when coupled with the sublime aesthetics of these Christmas lightings and decorations. I would not have wished it otherwise.
I have other fond memories of that trip last year. Following a radio programme outside a see-through radio studio at Odaiba, browsing through a secondhand CD shop in the cold December night at Ikebukuro, sitting at the Starbucks café opposite Shibuya Station and looking down at the massive endless crowd below, walking up to Shibuya 109, and trying to walk on the spur of the moment from Harajuku to Shinjuku – that was a folly not to be repeated. And there was that river stroll I wanted to make visiting the bridges of Tokyo – I did not manage to complete that, having gone in the wrong direction from Shiodome that last evening. I had then told myself that I would leave that as a little regret of the visit, and to assign it to my next visit to Tokyo.
I had planned on returning to Tokyo this holiday, but I guess my condition really does not permit that now. But I like this feeling, that of having an unaccomplished desire, a yearning. It’s sort of a little bittersweet, and it is like that unfulfilled holiday that I would look forward to.
I would visit Tokyo again next December.
posted by edwinheng at 9:38 pm
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