Dear reader,
Tokyo has been a pleasurable puzzle to me from the moment I first arrived here three decades ago. Born and raised in London, I still remember the delicious feeling of disorientation when, fresh off the plane, I emerged blinking into the neon-lit Shinjuku district to wait for a friend to pick me up and show me around.
I felt immediately then, and feel even more now, that this vast city, centre of the world’s largest urban area, operates with very different rhythms to the ones I was used to back home. This site is my attempt to interpret the city and also to describe it, in words and pictures.
It isn’t only about Tokyo the place, though. It’s also about living here, and that, of course, includes things that one can find anywhere in Japan.
And I’ve thrown in a section on Japanese fiction as well, for all you readers out there. It’s mainly to introduce authors not yet that well known to English-language readers. I may add Tokyo-specific fiction, too, in the future.