Favorite Trips: Seamless

Both my wife and I grew up in small towns, I in the west and she in the north. We both remember dirt roads, corner stores, small communities, smaller buildings, and limited diversity. Though we live in a small town now, our lives are heavily peppered with city influences.

Traveling to cities over the years has grown on us, taught us. And though each may have their similarities, each city is different.

Our faces hit the sunlight as we climbed up and out of the hole in the ground. With subway stations every quarter mile or so, getting around is easy. All around us rose sky-scraping towers. And the streets were paved with the purest of golds—street food. At first blush, it looks like any other city, until, right in the middle of it all, a clearing in the concrete jungle reveals the Kabuki-za Theater.

No, this is not New York, Chicago, London, or Paris.

This is Tokyo.

Some cities claim to mix old and new. But no place achieves such a pure blend as Tokyo. To your left: Yodobashi Camera, selling technology that most Americans won’t see for years. To your right: a Shinto shrine that is older than most sovereign nations.

And the blend is seamless.

From the subway station we step onto the famous Ginza and up to the old theater. We wait in line to buy our tickets, just for one act. Our attention spans are far too short for five hours of theater. Nearly a hundred of us filed into the doors and up the elevator, onto the fourth-floor mezzanine of the theater.

A curtain hangs below. It depicts Mount Fuji—the Rising Sun in the background. The play begins; the curtain is drawn. The actors below dance and portray an ancient story from the olden-time, the time of the Samurai. Their movements are lavishly exaggerated. And the milky-white face paint can be seen easily from my seat in the balcony. Drums beat. Three-stringed tones of the shamisen call. The audience shouts strange encouragements to their entertainers on the stage.

Yet not too far away, on the busy street below, taxis take businessmen to airports. Women walk into Louis Vuitton Stores. And sitters in booths try to convince passersby to change their cell phone plan.

Seamless and new.

Timeless and old.

This is Tokyo.

anthony forrest