Shinjuku Was the Future Once

I have just been visiting Tokyo. Unlike say NY, Paris or Rome this has always been a generic city to me. I was unable to visualise it in advance. I won't bore you with how this visit has changed my impressions of this amazing city - just come over for the slide night on Wednesday. BYO sake! Whether it's the view from the window in my superior room, overlooking the Imperial Palace (hint: if you talk loud and fast to Tokyo hotel staff they decide you are mad and give you a room upgrade, this also works in Kyoto), the Tokyo Fishmarkets (alone responsible for 70% depletion of the World's sashimi stocks), or Rappapongi Hills (another hot tip: if you want to see Mt Fuji from the 468th floor private dining club get there before 7am ). What? You are busy on Wednesday? What about the 20th? I see. Busy till 2010. Well I guess it's a busy time.

So anyway I went to Shinjuku. An area of Tokyo famous for inspiring Ridley Scott in the 80s for his dystopian vision of the city of the future in "Blade Runner". Giant screens selling (I think) Disney movies and possibly haemmaroid cream. It was hard to tell the difference. I was a little suprised at this uninspiring former vision of future now but it seems that this area of Tokyo has been surpassed by another called Shibuya. An ever more electrified area where impossibly hip young Tokyoites hang out to be videoed and projected on giant screens around the square. At least that is what it says in the guidebooks. I didnt go to this updated vision of the future. I had ancient temples, shrines and acres of dead fish to see. At least in Shinjuku there was a Gap that sold underwear in my (almost) size. But I feel I should warn you, in the city of the future what is a slim 34" in today's sizes has become a size 40".

So I have seen the future as it was once. "Blade Runner" is still my favourite movie of all time if you had asked me in 1989 - set as it was in a Shinjuku-like phantasmagoria, a traditional 1980s futuristic neighbourhood of Tokyo. Go visit. If you haven't aready.