Being Godzilla in Tokyo

Tokyo is not a city designed for people like me. At six-foot-five, I move through its streets like a slightly less destructive version of Godzilla. No radioactive breath, no appetite for skyscrapers, just an oversized gaijin trying not to decapitate himself on low-hanging signs.

I walk alone through the streets. People stare. I stare back. Occasionally, I offer a cheerful smile and wave, like the penguins in Madagascar. Somewhere in the back of my head, Alphaville’s “Big in Japan” plays on an endless loop. Subtlety has never been my strong suit.

Nothing to see here, just Godzilla passing through Harajuku.

After a prolonged battle with the Tokyo subway map, a cryptographic masterpiece apparently designed by a committee of sadistic mathematicians, I emerge in Shibuya. Here at the famous crossing, thousands of pedestrians pour across the intersection in a beautifully choreographed display of organized chaos.

I am surrounded by an ocean of strangers. Nobody knows my name. Nobody gives a damn. There’s something wonderfully liberating about that.

Tokyo subway map. Clear as mud.

I retreat to a second-floor Starbucks overlooking the crossing, order an espresso and unfold my battered Lonely Planet. Below me, humanity surges across the asphalt in great synchronized waves, dissolving and reforming with every change of the traffic lights. It’s hypnotic. Thousands of individual lives, ambitions, disappointments and questionable fashion choices, all briefly converging on the same patch of concrete. It feels like the video to the Mad World cover by Gary Jules.

People are people at the busy Shibuya crossing.

Just a few subway stops north, Shinjuku presents an entirely different beast. The western side is a sterile forest of skyscrapers, immaculate corporate monuments reaching for the heavens. Impressive but about as exciting as a board meeting with exceptionally good architecture. I attempt to infiltrate a few of the more interesting buildings, including the spectacular Cocoon Tower, only to be intercepted by security guards who apparently spotted the approaching giant from several postal codes away. Polite smiles but access denied. Talk to the hand. It seems Godzilla is not on the guest list.

As darkness falls, I abandon the corporate wasteland and head east. And suddenly, Tokyo starts making sense. Or rather, it stops making sense in exactly the way I’d hoped.

I wander down the neon-soaked Yasukuni-dori Avenue, the same stretch of urban madness where Bill Murray’s taxi carried him into Tokyo in the opening scenes of Lost in Translation. The city flickers and pulses around me, an electrical fever dream of glowing signs, narrow alleyways and establishments whose purpose is not always immediately apparent. Welcome to Kabukicho.

Passing through a noisy Pachinko hall in eastern Shinjuku. Imagine the smell.

This is the Tokyo I came looking for. A shotgun blast of neon stacked upon neon. Pachinko parlors rattling like industrial machinery. Electronic jingles competing for dominance over the constant murmur of humanity. Cigarette smoke, caffeine and the unmistakable atmosphere of people pursuing pleasures best left unexplained to their mothers.

All that’s missing is a giant Atari sign and a little acid rain, and my Blade Runner fantasy would be complete. Somewhere around the next corner, I half expect Harrison Ford to emerge from a noodle bar looking miserable.

I wander through the labyrinth of Kabukicho, past establishments ranging from mildly suspicious to gloriously disreputable. Inside a Pachinko hall, the noise is so overwhelming that I briefly wonder whether permanent hearing damage is included in the admission price.

I dodge into a Manga Kissa, one of those peculiar Japanese institutions where customers rent tiny booths to read comics, browse the internet or simply take a nap. In a city where every square meter comes at a premium, even solitude has an hourly rate.

Tokyo is an intoxicating mixture of fascination and frustration. Everything seems meticulously organized, yet much of it remains utterly incomprehensible. People are unfailingly polite. Shopkeepers greet me with enthusiastic cries of irrashaimase, and even rejection is delivered with the kind of exquisite courtesy that would make a British diplomat weep.

But beneath all that hospitality lies an invisible boundary. As a gaijin, I can observe, spend money and occasionally embarrass myself. But there’s always the nagging sensation that I’m watching a private party through a window. Everyone knows the rules except me, and nobody seems particularly inclined to explain them. Being tall enough to collide with the ceiling decorations doesn’t exactly help me blend in.

Eventually, I find myself wandering through Golden Gai, a wonderfully ramshackle collection of tiny bars tucked into narrow alleys. Some barely have room for half a dozen customers, let alone a moody giant dressed in black.

A few places make it abundantly clear that foreigners are not welcome. No dramatic confrontation, just a small sign or that unmistakable look suggesting my presence would be about as welcome as a drunken rhinoceros at a tea ceremony. Fair enough. It’s their bar.

I keep walking, peering into dimly lit doorways, listening to laughter and conversations I can’t understand. Somewhere behind those walls are stories, secrets and probably some very questionable decisions being made over Suntory whisky. And I’m standing outside, looking in.

And there I am, Godzilla without the destruction, wandering through the world’s greatest urban fever dream, looking for a place where I can fit through the door.