Tokyo

2 The Essence of Tokyo.

Tokyo is a fascinating city. As we walked through the many streets and neighborhoods, we discovered historical temples, as well as new technology and high fashion. Riding the trains and subways allowed us to see the people of Tokyo and how they communicate with each other. We decided that we were enamored by this spectacular place, because it was so unique. Here are some of the things that we found to be both different and interesting about Tokyo:

PLATFORM FASHION BOOTS:

Everywhere you turn, the women, and children for that matter, are wearing these platform boots. They come in many different styles: leather, suede, square toe, round toe, lace up, buckle or just slip on. They come in every color imaginable: black being the most common color, followed by suede, blue, white, red, orange. We think that several of the women wearing these boots must have had a pair for every outfit, because they always seemed to match perfectly with their fashionable outfit and coat. Needless to say, Kelly felt very frumpy in her travel gear, gortex jacket and hiking boots. In general, Tokyo is a very fashionable and stylish place; people, particularly the young professionals, always seem to want to look their best.

NEON!!!

After World War II, Tokyo was a wasteland. Beginning in 1945, Tokyo had to rebuild itself from the ground up. Therefore, if you walk the streets of the different neighborhoods, you will notice that everything is fairly new. With this modernization, came neon. This comes to no surprise, as Tokyo is one of the most techologically advanced cities. They announce this fact to the world in lights. The neon is not concentrated in one area or neighborhood; it is everywhere. It adds greatly to the vibe and frenetic nature of this city.

SLEEPING AND BREATHING ON THE STREETS OF TOKYO:

The residence of Tokyo live hard and play hard; therefore, there is not much time for a good night's sleep, or so we concluded as we saw people sleeping everywhere (but particularly on the subways). And these were not bums, mind you; couples, professionals, mothers...all in transit and catching some zzzz's. Once when we observed one professional couple sound asleep on our train, we wondered how all of these sleeping could know when to wake up for their stop. We learned that sometimes they don't, as we watched this couple wake up in a panic when they realized that their stop had long passed. So as you can see, these people sleep and breath this city. Many are concerned about the breathing part, as they walk the streets and ride the trains with surgical masks, as you can see above, in order to avoid taking in the smog that comes as a result of a large city of 12,000,000 people. The man on the left has mastered both the sleeping and the breathing. By the way, he did manage to wake up before reaching his destination, but not before we could sneak a photo.

FAKE FOOD:

No wonder most of the people in Tokyo are thin. Most of the food is fake. But seriously, this food is a work of art. Artists spend countless hours sculpting and painting these delicious looking dishes so that restaurant owners can display to the public their most popular dishes. This helps takes the guess work out for the residents of Tokyo and also helps to break the language barrier for the foreigners (like us) who do not speak Japanese. We found it very easy to stand at the restaurant window with our waiter and say, "I want that." To the left is the display case from a shop that sells nothing but wax food to tourists and restaurants alike. It all looks amazingly real, and has a huge price tag to match. On the right is the display at one of the restaurants where we ate...looks good, doesn't it?

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