By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine
LONDON is ancient and holds its secrets close, just like a wizard treasures his scrolls. Northern California is laid back and cool, like a lover seeking solace and shadow. But Tokyo is not like any other place in the world. Other places are bright, but nowhere near as bright. Other places are garish, but nowhere near as garish. Other cities are advanced, but none of them even come close to Tokyo. It is a city that exists within contradictions, in the netherworld between the past and the future, like an electric Brigadoon.
Unlike Manila, everything works, perhaps too well. You get the feeling that if you don’t work well enough, you will soon be replaced and no one will bat an eyelash. There is an energy in Tokyo’s streets, in the hair of all sorts, in the strange outfits, in the fact that even the baddest boys are conscious of the latest fashions. And when the subway trains open their doors and the school kids come streaming out, it really does look like a scene straight out of “Battle Royale.”
And what would Tokyo be without its toys? Its toy stores are all over-the-top. Its corridors are crammed with a Tokyo icon, the gashapon machines, a vending machine for toys. Of course, everything comes out of vending machines in Tokyo, be it liter-cans of beer or umbrellas. But gashapons are perfectly Tokyo, like pachinko machines that actually pay out.
But if you pause just for a moment and try to listen above the din of clicks and tones, over the hum and whirr, you can hear the sound of Tokyo’s birds, crows and the like, cawing above the streets as they have for centuries. In the city where everything changes, they stay the same.
Yes, it is mindbogglingly expensive. Don’t dare to compute the prices in pesos or you risk fainting from calculating the cost of anything fresh. Yes, there is hardly any English at all. What little you will find is usually rendered in Engrish, the less said of which the better. And yes, you will never truly fit in because we are all gaijin. The Other in a land that never forgets who its true denizens are.
In that sense, Tokyo is the city of the future save that it exists now. Every visit is a dream, but we also must wake from dreams to live our lives.
For more stories, check out the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s Favorite Places issue this Sunday, April 13.
