Tokyo is arguably the greatest city in the world.  It is certainly the biggest and is a world leader in things ranging from safety (safer than Zurich) to the number of Michelin 3 star restaurants (more than Paris). 

What makes Tokyo so tantalizing to me is its unrivaled density of alluring features and its profusion of things to do and see.  The very structure of Tokyo is based upon adeptly and intensively utilizing every square meter of available space.  This intensity, flavored with Japanese culture, is the alchemy that creates this city's good life. 

The beauty of Tokyo is not the sort of beauty people associate with cities such as Paris.  Paris and Tokyo do have certain things in common, including incredible food, high culture, and general sophistication.  But Tokyo's beauty is not visible on a grand scale.  Instead it resides in the small details of every street. 

These details are evident on every street you walk along.  But in Tokyo's main shopping and entertainment districts, the density of detail is like nothing you will see anywhere else.  The picture to the right shows a street in Shibuya, with signs advertising fast food, convenience stores, restaurants, karaoke boxes and pachinko parlors among many other businesses.  It's a kind of madness that plays out on multiple levels in all the multi-storied buildings.  It's quite normal to go up 6 floors to visit your favorite bar.  The strangeness to most foreigners of the written Japanese language makes Tokyo appear even madder than it is.  But reading the language is like turning on the lights!  There is so much information. 

The intensity of details and features is not skin deep.  It penetrates into most any business you enter.  You can see it in the tightly-packed 24-hour convenience stores that are everywhere.  They are brimming with products and services often unlike those in any other country, with astounding variety, including prepared Japanese foods, an enormous variety of beverages, and a broad selection of groceries and toiletries.  While living in Japan for 10 years, I was always disappointed to come home and see the relatively barren, often dirty, 7-11 stores in the US.  I wondered how they could afford to utilize their retail space so poorly. 

Drug stores are equally full of density and surprises.  The picture above shows Matsumoto Kiyoshi, one of my favorites, in Yurakucho (near Tokyo Station).  I don't believe you can find intense organization and variety like this in any store outside of Japan.  Shelves and all available spaces, literally, are carefully and artfully filled with seemingly unending products.  This product variety, I believe, is partly due to Japan having a dualistic medical system based on both Western medicine and traditional Japanese medicine (similar to Chinese medicine).  I wonder if product developers from the US and Europe come to Japan for new product ideas.  The stores are full of them!

The retail abundance in convenience and drug stores is not an anomaly.  The remarkable cornucopia extends into many other types of businesses, from bountiful bookstores to exhaustively stocked do-it-yourself stores such as the eight-story-tall Tokyu Hands in Shibuya,. pictured at the right.

In my opinion, it's difficult to find retail rivaling Japan's abroad, at least when it comes to the variety and quality of products offered. 

I'm interested in Japan's hyper-developed retail spaces because, like Japanese cooking (which I wrote about in my last posting), they help provide a kind of framework for understanding the uniqueness of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.  They're a window into Japanese culture that showcase characteristics that permeate and define Tokyo's general physical environment and urban infrastructure.

A striking example of the Japanese approach to urban design is Ohashi Junction in Ikejiri-Ohashi.  This traffic management project includes a new covered highway interchange enmeshed in a complex of apartment buildings, retail outlets, a public library, a soccer field and a 'rooftop' park (including a rice paddy) extending along the cover of the circular junction (see the picture to the right).  This project exemplifies the detail-oriented, space intensive, innovative design that makes Tokyo unique. 

As this massive project was only minutes from where I stayed in Ikejiri-Ohashi, I had plenty of time to explore the details.  As you can see in the pictures below, very little space went to waste and high quality materials were used throughout.  I marveled at the pristine and seemingly perfect cement used throughout the structure.  If a project of this quality, complexity and innovativeness were to arise in New York or London, it would be world famous.  Nowhere else have I seen highway infrastructure so fully and tastefully integrated into the urban fabric that it actually improves a neighborhood. 

I took the elevator up to the Meguro Sky Garden above the interchange and ventured out into the lush landscaping high above the streets of Tokyo.  It was hard to imagine that I was walking on the roof of a highway junction.  The park space was comfortable, with plenty of places to sit and enjoy the view.  It was remarkable and a true green oasis in what would normally be a wasteland used only by vehicles. 

If you want to see what it's like to drive through the interchange and then further along a covered highway emerging in another part of Tokyo, check out this video.

Below are a few pictures I took on my walk around the project. 

Almost directly across the street from the Ohashi Junction project is the entrance to the Meguro Green Promenade, another example of unusual design and evidence of the surprising complexity and diversity of Tokyo.  I was in Ikejiri-Ohashi because the friends I stayed with live here, and I just happened to discover these things within five minutes of their home. 

The Green Promenade runs for several kilometers along the surface of a covered portion of the Meguro River and has been designed as a peaceful oasis in the middle of this hectic city.  It is filled with biodiversity and features a little stream with crystal-clear water which provides a home for small fish, crayfish and water striders. 

The surrounding landscaping is atypical, especially for Tokyo, in that it has a high level of plant, insect and animal biodiversity.  Although I was in the center of the biggest city in the world, I saw many birds, butterflies and other insect life.  This totally artificial creation has become an important refuge for nature.   

In the video below, you can walk with me along the Promenade. I need to improve my video-taking technique, but it's a glimpse into another part of Tokyo few visitors see. 

One day I went to visit my old central-Tokyo neighborhood of Bunkyo Ward (where I lived for 10 years), and was pleased to see the evidence of citizen involvement in maintaining the urban environment. 

The sign to the right is from a local non-profit in the Hongo neighborhood. The organization works to keep the streets clean and green.  This NPO (non-profit organization) is called something like "Towning Hongo" if translated into English.  This sign illustrates the flexibility and acquisitiveness of the Japanese language.  Japanese unabashedly appropriates words, acronyms and even grammatical phrases from foreign languages with no fear of diluting itself.  The Japanese may at times be a bit xenophobic, but their language isn't.  The top line of the sign reads "NPO Corporation 'Machi-ing' Hongo.

New citizen-based movements are taking to the streets as a reaction to poor economic conditions, lower government resources and a shift away from small, private businesses to chain stores and restaurants.  The locally owned stores were apparently better neighborhood stewards. 

Finally, a word on transport.  Tokyo has by far the most comprehensive and complex public transportation network in the world.   It is as dense and complex as everything else in this city but makes getting around very easy and stress-free (except, perhaps, during rush hour).  Tokyoites tend to take public transport, walk or ride their bicycles instead of driving cars. 

This city is also connected with all other major cities in Japan by the world-famous bullet train system (picture at left).  The stations and trains are spotless and trains are almost always perfectly on time. 

Below is a map of the full Tokyo metropolitan commuter rail network, including subways and the many other private rail lines Tokyoites use to get around their metro area.  There are over 1000 stations.  No system anywhere else comes close in scale. 

The miracles of the Japanese kitchen, particularly in the home of a highly skilled cook, begin in a place like you see in the picture to the left.  The kitchen is a densely packed space, assembled with function, not aesthetics, in mind.  There are dozens of tools and utensils that would puzzle most anyone from outside this East Asian island.  But somehow the complex orchestration of cooking items becomes a thing of beauty - particularly when you understand the nuanced delicacies that emerge from this space.  This is the kitchen of my dear friend, the extraordinarily talented cook, Sachiko Onishi.  Sachiko was surprised that I wanted to take pictures of her kitchen.  It's a place I had become very used to over the many years I lived in Tokyo.

It may be odd that I'm writing about a Japanese kitchen in a blog focused on urban design, but I was struck with the parallels between this Japanese kitchen and the lively and engaging urban spaces in Tokyo.  And furthering the culinary link, while in China and Japan on this trip, I spent a lot of time thinking about food, and how good food and good urban spaces have certain key things in common.  More on this later.

First a look at a kitchen drawer to the right, with a collection of rice bowls, bowls for miso soup, and small tea cups. Note that the high-quality bowls and cups are not matching, as would be common in the US or Europe.  Instead each is unique, providing additional variety and aesthetic pleasure to a meal. 

In the pictures below you get a peek into four cupboards in Sachiko's kitchen.  Here are arrayed the widely varied set of dishes required for Japanese cuisine.  The Japanese do not generally eat meals on one large plate.  Instead, each individual food item (and in a typical Japanese meal there are many items) has its own, often small, dish. 

You can see that even the western-style coffee and tea cups hanging in one cabinet are different and not matching.  It's an extra pleasure to have a different, beautiful cup with your coffee every morning. The visual and tactile dimension of dishes is very important to the Japanese. 

Let me add that while staying with Sachiko's family for 10 days, the morning coffee was meticulously and artfully prepared by Sachiko's husband, my good friend Nozomu. 

Good food in Japan is an obsession.  It's a very popular conversation topic and the Japanese seem to always be in search of great new culinary treats. 

One of the keys to good Japanese cooking is a fine balancing of quality, fresh ingredients in complex combinations of subtle flavors, smells and satisfying textures.

The picture above is a very simple example of the unexpected combinations that Sachiko puts together that taste simply amazing.  This is probably not a dish that Sachiko would like me to post, because it was something she just threw together quickly, but it shows her sophisticated understanding of food and how flavors, smells and textures complement each other.  There is a bowl of miso soup at the top right, cucumbers with miso paste top left, and a plate of Japanese-style fried rice featuring natto (a strong-smelling, sticky form of fermented soy beans) and chirimen jako (chewy, dried baby sardines).  It was bliss.

A visit to any local Japanese supermarket illustrates how blessed the Japanese are with thousands of sophisticated ingredients.  There is an extraordinary range of picture-perfect vegetables, mushrooms and fruits.  There is a huge selection of very fresh seafood.  And then there are the many aisles filled with all sorts of other ingredients, ranging from sauces and condiments to dozens of types of dried seaweed and kelp.

A typical American faced with a basket filled with a normal day's food shopping in Japan would be at a loss.  I don't imagine they would find anything edible or have any clue how to put together a meal using the ingredients.  I smiled while recently standing in line and peering into the shopping baskets of those around me.  It was marvelous to see so many people with an intimate connection to cooking and what I imagined to be an ability to prepare an excellent meal using all sorts of fresh seafood and vegetables. 

Below is a sampling of the types of delicious food Sachiko prepares at home on a daily basis.

So back to my thoughts on the Japanese kitchen, cooking and urban design.  When I experience a neighborhood that feels great, like Sachiko's kitchen it's not some austerely designed sanitary creation of an architect or urban planner.  Instead it's a messy combination of elements that have evolved together and whose sum is greater than its parts. 

A great neighborhood has a variety of shops, businesses, restaurants and residential buildings, and lots of people of all sorts walking, shopping, riding their bicycles and even passing by in buses and cars.  No single element (like a huge road with speeding cars) should dominate the scene.  It may not always be pretty, but it will be comfortable, convenient and engaging.  People will be drawn to a good neighborhood.  In Tokyo there are so many neighborhoods of this kind, tightly packed with attractive and enticing features, and with a constant stream of people engaged in many different activities.  Neighborhoods such as this are exciting and make you feel like you're in the midst of something wonderful. 

The elements and features that make up a wonderful neighborhood are much like the ingredients found in great food. Quality ingredients skillfully combined, and served in beautiful dishes, create excellent cuisine.  Likewise, the quality and complexity of elements, naturally fused over years, create wonderful neighborhoods.  In my next posting on Tokyo, I will go into the details of the 'recipe' for a good neighborhood. 

To close,  I share a picture of Sachiko and her family.  They are my good friends of nearly 20 years and were kind enough to host me while I stayed in Tokyo this last time. 

In the picture to the right, we are just about to enjoy a dinner of oden, one of my favorite winter foods in Japan.

Nozomu (the family intellectual) sits on the left. Sachiko (the gifted chef and one of the highest energy people I have ever met) on the right.  And Rui (their very kind, smart and hospitable son) in front.  Life is good with friends like these.