Yesterday, I had the distinct displeasure of doing some shopping around Tokyo, and I'm left with similar feelings about Tokyo. I started out at Takadanobaba (and no, that is not some Baba Yaga joke, that's the name of the station). I picked up a new pair of hiking pants, as I tore a huge hole in my previous pair when I took a tumble last year. That experience was fine.
Next, I stopped at Shin-Okubo, which is home to a huge immigrant population. You'll find lots of people from Korea, southeast Asia, and especially the Middle East. The later makes the area a great source for getting spices in bulk at reasonable prices. For whatever reasons, more than your typical quota of clueless assholes decided to go there as well. Maybe some of them were from some no-name Podunk town and this was their first experience in a big city, I don't know. I do know that they decided to gawk at the regular stores, stand and wait in utterly ridiculous spots, and in general clog the flow of foot traffic.
After getting my coriander and black pepper at great prices, I headed over to Shinjuku. Now, for the last two years, I've been commuting to Shinjuku once or twice a week for work, and I always dread those days. Like Ginza, where I also work once a week, there is a good chance that you will not hear any Japanese spoken on the street in Shinjuku. Instead, you will hear Chinese. Now, whatever your opinion might be of the Chinese government, Chinese food, or Chinese people, who are as diverse and varied as any other group that usually gets maligned in various media (eg, the French, Americans, Russians, Australians, etc), I think we can all agree that Chinese tourists are not the greatest people in the whole world. What is salient for me is that they tend to travel in packs, blocking traffic flow, and they tend to buy lots of useless shit, which happens not to be available in China or is much more expensive there, but which also serves to block traffic flow.
Shinjuku is a really popular shopping district, and when combined with Japanese people from the countryside gawking, tourists who don't know where the fuck they are or where they are going, and the generally sedate pace of shoppers and geriatrics, you get the congestion we all know and despise.
Another particular pet peeve ("I don't have pet peeves. I have major fucking psychotic hatreds." ~ George Carlin ) of mine is walking while texting or using a smart phone. Now, look. I've been lost before, many times. I've definitely found it useful to have Google Maps out with directions so that I can glance at it. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about texting, Tweeting, checking out food shots and ass shots on Instagram, etc. As if being in contact with anyone constantly is worth the chance of getting hit by a train or run over by a bus. As if that one message sent at exactly the right moment (which of course is while you're walking) will make or break your social life. You see these people everywhere in Tokyo.
The greater Tokyo area has a population of about 40 million people, with an area of about 13,500 km2. No matter how you cut it, that is a lot of people, and even if 99.9% of people are great, law-abiding, and polite citizens, that leaves 40,000 assholes. You're guaranteed to run into about 3 in every square kilometer.
With all of that in mind, I'd like to add my cosmic vote to the Saitama Bay Project. If a large earthquake occurs in this area, let it take this overcrowded city down to the depths. If we continue to use greenhouse gases and ocean levels rise, let the water embrace this city.
