THE LANGUAGE OF OPPOSITES
“Walking around here feels like a step back in time... Everything is quaint and charming”
To travel through Tokyo for the first time is to learn the language of opposites: old and new, east and west, otherworldliness and banality. Every account of it is honest. Tokyo is as truthfully depicted in haiku and ukiyo-e as it is in the fiction of modern writers such as Haruki Murakami, whose novels collectively refer to a city that walks the fine line between dreams and reality.
Understanding Tokyo is less about translation and more about sensation. It will take anybody, even a Tokyoite, a lifetime to experience all that it has to offer. But, at the very least, first-time travellers can count on the city’s trains to run like clockwork, as if attempting to help them navigate a complex narrative that constantly skips back and forth between centuries.
Those looking to. cover lady Rissa Mananquil- Trillo describes the palace grounds as transporting, “a beautiful garden in the middle of the city.” Another lively location north of the area is Ueno Park, whose central pathway is flanked by 1,000 cherry trees, and whose grounds are home to both the Tokyo National Museum and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.
