The Center of the Universe

It bothered me slightly that there’s a station in Tokyo innocuously named Tokyo Station. “Jason,” I asked Jason as I was planning our trip, “aren’t all the stations on this map in Tokyo?” “Well, sure, but that’s Tokyo Station.” I guess it was a pretty big station, and one of the major Shinkansen stops, although I think Shinjuku Station had more lines.

By the time I was actually ascending the steps out of Tokyo Station, I was sufficiently accustomed to strange happenings that it only bothered me slightly when I found myself facing a moat. I’m not entirely sure I had ever seen a real, live moat before; I’d soon be used to it. But here we were at the Imperial Palace, the private residence of the Emperor, a postwar building built in the traditional style, closed to the public (it’s someone’s house after all) except for a very nice public garden with a pond from which koi watched us with apparent interest. I’ve never been followed by a fish before. The other inhabitants of the garden were a swarm of thirty or so people dressed in hooded white robes who seemed to be doing something with the plants. I dubbed them horticultists and gave them a wide berth; somehow I had been ready for raw fish and imperial palaces but not this.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped off at Harajuku Station, and for the first time I think Japan began to click for me.