Message from vortiz
AnonymousI know this response is rather late.....but I wanted to share my POV on Japanese cities. Since 1988, I have been to Nagoya, Osaka, Tokyo, and Sapporo to visit friends (not as a tourist) and done the tourist cities. Over the nineties, the big cities did much to give themselves facelifts. Some really beautiful architectural events took place.
In Nagoya, the city I lived it, a new sports dome was built and Meieki, the trainstation, was massively redone, at least on the outside. Tokyo's Shinjuku area sports the soaring city-hall building, and, of course, Shibuya is an internationally recognized intersection.
As a resident there, I noticed that Japan is "old". Old in the sense that most of the facelifts happen in the inner city (something that Los Angeles has been very slow to learn), and that keeps it alive and thriving. Out in the "burbs", the look is "lived-in", but I do not remember too many neighborhoods that looked like slums (I wish I could say the same for LA). I was always amazed at how I could walk in Nagoya, safely, far from the "gaijin" enclaves, anywhere in the city, and feel comfortable. Neighborhoods are, like NY, self-supporting, and easy for a person travel. Of course, if you are Japanese, you drive, but I walked a lot.
Now, a peev. Japanese streets are not as well marked as in LA. Rather, the neighborhoods are marked by groups of blocks, not by length of street between blocks. How do you find 10625 Plainview Ave in Japan? Not by a sign telling you that you are on Plainview, or where the 10000 block is. You just know the "chome", or collection of blocks, the address is in and then you go hunting. The complexity of this dawned on me when I was taken by my vice principal and school office manager to meet my landlord.....the city of Nagoya had arranged my apartment rental, but I was obliged to meet my landlord. We drove around his neighborhood, up and down many streets, looking for his house. I had a similar problem finding a high school on National Sport Day, but I had the advantage of following all the school uniforms for several blocks to the campus.
You do see a lot of those combi buildings, bottom shops, stores, banks, and top apartments, and though it may give a crowded feeling, there is "wa" about it.
Well, there are some raw vignettes of Japanese cities for you.
Two things I cannot address, but am aware of, is the rising homeless problem and the foreign laborer issue. I have seen news stories, but have not been there since 1998 to comment on what impact the situations are having on cities.
VO