Introduction
These are photos from my recent trip to Tokyo, where I grew up but things seem increasingly foreign since I moved to San Francisco Bay Area years ago.
There are so many new buildings and so many new subway lines. It is amazing how much wealth was accumulated through Japan's economic miracle (long time ago), and how it is mindlessly spent on real estate (who needs so many when the population is about to peak?) Many look as if they came straight out of the movie, Lost in Translation. Tokyo does not have a sky, as a famous poet once proclaimed, though it is filled with so many incridible geometric shapes.
Everything talks there, including GPS navigators (a friend of mine has two in his car) and automatic train ticket gates (it's mind-bogglingly Scifi when 20 of them say "pick up your ticket" in cacophony, while a human attendant shouts the same message on top of it). People watch TV on cell phone, as a fixed rate for 2.4M mobile data connection (3G) has come down to bellow US$40.
Lost in Translation: most of native Tokyo-ers say it is true to life, down to the funny TV show. The lonliness the movie portrays is shared not only by the fading actor but by the locals. Everything seems soft, cheerful and colorful, which delineates one's internal void.
