Tokyo: A city built in layers
Want to get the most out of one of the Japanese capital’s most vibrant districts? Head underground and feast with the locals, writes Ged Cann.
As the distinction between street, basement and bridge erodes, so does the division between technology and mythology, tradition and fashion.
Arriving in Tokyo’s Minato district, we were fortunate to have a Wendy Wu guide to help us navigate the multilayered city.
She takes us to a cafe to decompress, where well-dressed businessmen and women enjoy a morning Joe.
You wouldn’t know you were in a basement two storeys below street level, because in Tokyo basements are not the dirty, dark and dank spaces we’re used to. They are thoroughfares free from the competition of cars, cabs and cyclists.
‘‘One of the best pieces of advice I’ve had in Tokyo is never to eat at a restaurant on the ground level. Go up or go down,’’ our guide tells us.
‘‘People say Japan is very expensive to eat, it doesn’t have to be.’’
She proves her point – in the Ginza District, on one of the busiest streets in the world, we take a nondescript corridor into an unobtrusive elevator, and come out a dozen storeys above, into a Kushiage restaurant.
A large window seat overlooks the Wako Store, which our guide explains is famous for two things: being the most expensive commercial spot in the city, and being destroyed by Godzilla. We pay $17 for an eight-piece meal.
That day we skip between subways and railway platforms, travelling to Meiji Shrine.The shrine is Shinto – a native Japanese belief without a founder, a holy book, or any other trapping common to most religions. Shinto preaches respect and balance with nature, a must for ancestors of a land rife with the potential for natural disasters.
A short walk and you’re suddenly on Takeshita St, a mecca for the bizarre and dazzling fashion popular among young Japanese girls.The only thing brighter than the luminous candy floss is the dyed hair and wigs, and young women in sky-high platforms compare purchases emblazoned with sequins and Hello Kitty logos.
The day’s eclectic offerings testify to the rich and muddled tapestry that is Tokyo. One moment you are waiting for the crowds to crash over you at the billboard-laden Shibuya crossing, where 4000 people can press past each other in a single flash of the green man, the next you are purifying yourself with smoke and receiving a fortune outside the Buddhist Sensoji Shrine.
At night, red lights blink from the tops of skyscrapers, warning aircraft, but ignored by pedestrians on streets bathed in equal measure by mesmerising neon signs and the warm glow of traditional paper lanterns.
The Skytree, our last stop after a busy day, testifies to the city’s achievement. A panorama from 635 metres above sea level reveals row after row of high rises, stacked like dominoes, dominating to the horizon.
Twice the population of New Zealand squeezed into an area a little larger than Stewart Island. But there is none of the bumper-to-bumper, hornhonking chaos of Bangkok traffic or shoulder-to- shoulder press of Phnom Pen.
The Japanese have tailored the city with technology and politeness, into something like a satellite of future cities. It is a city I believe even a cityhater could find value in, because it is a city unlike any other I have ever visited.
❚ The writer was a guest of Cathay Pacific.