Welcome to Japan Window

This is my first post in ?Japan Window.? As a beginning point, these pictures illustrate some challenges of trying to figure out what?s going on here. On the one hand, you have a city that?s a jumble of images seemingly in disorder, with lots of big ugly things and small ugly things (most of them concrete), and occasional beauty and design appearing in the middle (some of those are concrete, too). All around are unseen, sometimes visible, hands of corporations controlling giant video screens, directing a flow bodies, and wrapped around entire buildings.

At ground level, you have people living behind virtual walls, compacted within commuter trains in absolute silence, sitting beside each other but worlds apart in coffee shops... Of course, you'll find varieties of these same realities in Los Angeles or New York, and in whatever city comes to your mind, but this is a quick snapshot of one side of life I experience in and around Tokyo (there are other sides/varieties of life here, just to be clear). Anyway, in the coming months I hope to open a window through this blog. The purpose is for me to see Japan more clearly, and I'll be glad to share the process with you. Enjoy!