Tokyo - take it or leave it /Prologue

Prologue) 

I don't know if Tokyo is worth writing about or not but at some point there's a need to get it out of your system. It stands there - pompous giant without much personality, unable to intimidate but capable of making your everyday miserably annoying and yet somewhat comfy to live. 

Big city people are strange tribe taking their dwellings in stride, day by day, with the constant desire to escape that hardly ever materializes. 

Crammed, noisy existence is balanced with lazy comfort and relative safety. 

You learn to trade open green spaces for opportunities it presents and chance to be anonymous in the sea of people. You don't have to know or care for anyone if you so choose. Serious relationships are hard to sustain as nobody has any time to spare, unless of course you play for the team of numerous housewives or retired.

Things are mostly kept at a distance that only you yourself decide on. 

It's good and bad of course. Ask yourself a simple question: if you picked up a phone now, who would you call? Despite the immediate family or workplace.

For all the high tech making almost anything possible it's not an easy answer. 

People are swamped with busy schedules and live on different sides of the city, preoccupied with work and family hustle, constantly short of sleep and permanently tired.

Look at Tokyo face in the morning. It's a grey view of people half or deep asleep, somber and passive, devoid of any wish but get to the seat and sleep some more. 

Some sleep with their heads up and mouths open. It's hard to resist dropping something in accidentally or on purpose, just for fun.

But then again, Tokyo isn't famous for its sense of humor. It won't be understood or accepted. This inevitably adds so much more stress to everyday existence. People unable to laugh at themselves, cautiously suspicious of others intentions. 

At times you'd come across people who offer help or assistance to lost soles in the vastness of metropolitan public places but most of those had experience living outside the country and understand how it might feel. Never bet on the chance people will be helpful here. It's all in your luck in each given day. Most shy away from any real contact sighting lack of language skills, others are simply indifferent (you might as well be an alien from another planet), some could be even hostile and nasty for no apparent reason than (that) you are from the different world.

It wouldn't matter if you have lived here decades and reasonably speak the language. Outsiders looking for the 'warmth and closeness' of the community will hardly ever find what they're looking for.

Ironically, Tokyo is probably one of the strangest capital cities, the most resembling countryside communities weaved into the one giant patchwork, interspersed with rice paddies and small farms right next to modern condos.

Comparing it to London, Paris or Prague would be futile.

First, there is no center to this city the way it's perceived in Europe. Ask several people about it and they will give you all sorts of answers depending where they like to go. Each area or town has different local jurisdiction, and people tend to identify with the immediate place they inhabit. A little segment where their house is, the part of town they work in and places they go shopping to or hang out with friends. The rest is mostly non-existent to them. You get this bizarre feeling that people are deliberately isolating themselves cutting off all they deem redundant. 

Another thing, everything is in the mix here: residential areas are interspersed with businesses, stores, shops, railways and highways. There's virtually no demarcation between them. Today you live in a green residential area and tomorrow it'd start to turn into a fast growing concrete mini-jungle, reminiscent of the 'architectural efforts' of any other 'developed' place in the city.