The future is wow
Tokyo is a place consumed by technology. From skyscrapers filled with gadget shops and bars to cyber-punk bazaars and nine-storey video screens – say hello to cyber-city
Known for its fashion, nightlife and youth culture, Shibuya – like the rest of Tokyo – looks like a city from the future. Except its modern towers are built out of necessity rather than design. Twice in the past 100 years, Tokyo has been utterly destroyed – first in 1923 by the Great Kanto earthquake and then in 1945 by WWII US bombers.
Today, with a population of nearly 13 million – of whom around 83 per cent are of or below working age – this Japanese city is a big draw for gadget-heads.
And Shibuya is a prime example of this. In this Tokyo ward (the city is divided into 23 wards), shimmering structures reach vertiginously into the sky, neon signs cover most surfaces, and nine-storey video screens feature anthracite-haired goddesses waving gargantuan chopsticks at the crowds below. When Ridley Scott was making Blade Runner, imagining what Los Angeles might look like in the future, he took his inspiration from these sights and streets.
But Tokyo’s skyscrapers perform a function similar to that of UK high streets. The floors of a building might contain a shoe shop, nightclub, art galleries, bars, offices, apartments and electronic emporiums so rammed with gadgetry and crowded with people they look like some cyber-punk bazaar.
Digital nirvanaGetting lost is very easy to do in Tokyo, but there’s nearly always someone on hand to help. In this case a young, besuited guy didn’t just walk us to our destination, a bar, he bought us drinks too. Of course, he walked us there using a Sony Ericsson mobile equipped with street views. This gives you a photo-real representation of where you are and where you’re going. It was like playing a video game where the game is identical to where you are in real life.
The bar itself was on the second floor of a low-rise apartment building. Despite feeling like you’d gone back in time when you stepped into this low-lit, wood-cabin-like structure – which seated just 10 – you soon realise that even these tiny shacks are attuned to the advance of digital technology. The husband and wife who ran it had a state-of-the-art CD, Blu-ray Disc™ player, and a shop till that housed a small TV screen.
Tokyo depends and thrives on technology. From the punctual subway system, the GSM-equipped mobiles everyone owns to the plastic traffic cops wielding weird light sabres, the future is everywhere.
And this is especially true of the youth culture. A punk rocker with earring-studded lobes will be crowned by a Bluetooth headset, and he’ll be watching TV wearing a pair of virtual-reality sunglasses. Goth girls walk the streets with electronic make-up kits that can mix mascara and fire out bullet-headed lipsticks.
Sony, Sony everywhere…But to truly enter into the spirit of Tokyo’s youth cyber-culture you need to take a trip to Akihabara. Akihabara is the most extraordinary place. You can’t help but be blown away by the sheer volume of new stuff, much of it so esoteric and Japanese-specific it will probably never find its way out of these islands. Sony might have its HQ in the fashionable Ginza area but when people want to buy Sony kit they come here.
Immediately after WWII, Akihabara became the place where the occupying American GIs went to buy and sell military-issue radios on the black market. Pretty soon it had blossomed into Electric Town.
The most fascinating aspect of the place is the six-storey electronic shops. Bafflingly, the vast trestle tables that sit outside these places – bending beneath the weight of the latest Cyber-shots and VAIOs – are entirely unstaffed. Even more bafflingly, not a single piece of kit is tethered to the counters. You can spend hours fiddling with cameras, phones and PSPs and never be hassled by a sales assistant.
The real pleasure in places such as this is simply fiddling with stuff you've never seen before and will probably never see again. I spent a good 90 minutes playing a game that had me running a Sushi restaurant, which is a lot harder than it sounds and almost as addictive as Sushi itself.
If all this sounds a little odd, but it’s just one example of how technology has come to affect the Japanese. It is a place ruled and consumed by it. Think of the WALKMAN, think VAIO and Cyber-shot. Think order and attention to detail. Think things that work.
Story by Ben MarshallThis is an edited version of a feature in issue 5. To enjoy the full story, subscribe to Sony Magazine
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