Sunny Side Up

Culture—the word might as well have originated in Japan. The country is rich in history while being completely post-modern. A single visit does not suffice, yet let’s get you started.

- Preeti Verma Lal

Tsukiji. Koishikawa Korakuen. Hama Rikyu. Nihonbashi. Yasukuni. Yurakucho. Marunouchi. As I stepped into Tokyo, tongue twisting names started running in my head like boisterous scofflaws. I had packed these names in my memory: Tsukiji (the world’s busiest seafood market where five million pounds of seafood are sold daily); Koishikawa Korakuen (breathe the crisp air in the pretty landscaped garden); Nihonbashi (commercial district); Yasukuni (kneel in the shrine dedicated to the deities of Japan’s war dead); Yurakucho (dig the fork in the atmospheric dining destination); Marunouchi (business district). All the Tokyo to-dos were sorted and planned before landing in the world’s most populous metropolis that was once called Edo.

CITY OF CONTRASTS

But Tokyo’s paradoxes muddled my memory. In Ginza street where the mighty and the monied buy their baubles, there stood a monk. A novice Buddhist monk seeking alms in silence. The tranquility of the Imperial Palace was drowned in the cacophony of Harajuku street, a waif-thin lane synonymous with pop culture. Here, girls walk straight out of fashion catalogues and men defy all clichés. Goth. Lolitas. Punk. Grunge. Blingy. You see them all here. Cotton candies shed their pink for a powder blue, mannequins look prepped for cosplay and people sip coffee in cat cafés.