The Japanese sun smiles...

For work, yes, but I did take a peek at this wonderful country...sideways, a few moments, breezes of an Asia unknown to me...the lights of Tokyo dazzle the soul, its smiles warm it. 127 million people, almost 20 million in the capital area alone, oriental eyes everywhere, a country of 137 km2; Tokyo is its emblem but also its most distant relative. Tokyo is a city apart, different from the ancestral, hierarchical Japan of medieval memory: nothing to do with it... Lights, excess, added wealth, business, time, time, time...Tokyo races fast towards its appointments with the future, summons advanced technology, establishes ways and places according to very precise laws that cannot be broken, otherwise you're OUT...

The kindness, the attentiveness, the smile of these people clash with the difficulties of a society built on the foundations of a monstrous capitalism that has given more than it received, a rich society proud of being so, a people that makes of the rules its divine mandate, before the eyes of a timeless emperor but no longer regarded as the divine transfiguration of God on earth..luckily. Narita airport is far from the city, far from everything, almost an hour and a half by bus to reach the hotel in the middle of the outlandish Roppongi, where the fun indulgences reminiscent of Bangkok blend with a commercial and tourist air that you really like. A beehive of a city, motorways, expressways, canals, skyscrapers, garish lights, shops, small restaurants, and them running, going, coming, buying, bowing to us, smiling at us, who knows..what they must think....I don't want to know..

For Ginza business is the law to follow, it looks like Times Square, it looks like Piccadilly, it looks like Paris, but it also looks like Seoul, or Buenos Aires...the whole West merges with the whole East, it transforms you and you no longer know where to look, you no longer know where to turn, the images of a music video walk arm in arm with the decorations of the imminent Christmas, a happy breeze from the nearby Tokyo Bay, the pavement is perfectly clean - the perfection doesn't reach Singapore levels but we're close...Wow!! Although it was just a brief taste, I like this Tokyo, it's much, much better than I thought. I like them, the Japanese, even though their philosophy of life is very distant from mine; I like them also for what they have managed to do, for how they live, for the respect that we sometimes, nostalgically, have forgotten.

Here post-war capitalism attacked society but also saved it. The girls are beautiful: it will be my oriental weakness, it will be the clichés whirring in my little brain, but I can't help admiring the porcelain faces of these oriental goddesses, with their colourful kimonos, their studied, kind and beguiling movements. Walking through a city cemetery, among the skyscrapers flaunting their 60 floors, I feel as if in a dream: small tombs amid a reddish green, autumn now ending, the leaves falling, making the place magical and evocative. I lose myself along ordinary little streets, to arrive in front of a small Shinto temple; on one side the blinding lights of the Dior branch, on the other a mega-hotel roars its constant modernity, in the middle the little temple, wrapped in red lights, when suddenly..a small, beautiful lady stops, goes in, bows, leaves...beautiful!! And finally..the food.

I don't like sushi, no...but I must admit its flavour is truly light years away from our Japanese restaurants, but I recall that the best came on the last evening: I couldn't take any more raw food, I was looking for something else, but not a McDonald's, something different. On Roppongi dori, a little street, a little restaurant, a wonderful lady offers what she has: tempura, soup, green tea...rice..And off we go...Divine dinner, divine setting, magic and the desire to return to this country still to be discovered; lucky those who have already visited it, lucky those who have it planned...

Dear Japan, you were a surprise.

Andrea