First I must say I am impressed with a few things in Tokyo. We, (I consider myself a citizen of a western culture) have much to learn from Tokyo. A will state a few things that struck my mind today.

The subway system including the fact that you buy a ticket from a vending machine, travel somewhere and then there go back to another vending machine and adjust the price if you paid to little or too much. If you know you’ve paid the correct price just walk smoothly by the gates. The price for traveling around is almost half compared to Gothenburg. I might add that the smallest station have at least 6 different exits and are usually the size of Gothenburg Central Station.

The amount of garbage, junk, beggars and screaming children. Zero. I’m not sure I want to find out how they’ve accomplished this but it’s quite soothing to follow the stream of people.

Japanese views upon adult entertainment. Or entertainment at all. It is completely normal that in a music/movies store one out of three floors are dedicated to ‘visuals’. Visuals I thought would be a fancier word for movies, anime and so on. Little did I know about the Japanese mind and soul. Visuals is some genre of soft porn, girls that are ‘acting cute’ while showing off their bodies. And of this floor, say perhaps 25% is the more classic porn including intercourse, bondage and you name it. As long as a few pixels make impossible to tell exactly the look of a persons genitalia. You might argue that it’s quite possible to catch the drift of what that humping piece of pixels is doing bouncing between those female legs but due for some unknown reason this is censored.

In addition to this a few things has to be said as well here, if you visit a ‘love shop’ it has 4-5 floors of vibrators, movies, clothing (I will add a devoted entry about this some day because this needs to be said). I have to admit although I thought I knew some things about sexual ‘appliances’ I now know far more and will perhaps never be that innocent boy I was when I left.

Finally, it makes perfectly sense to have a fashionable Gucci store about 15m from a quite vividly announced strip-club. I wonder if it’s me or them who is the most normal.

Signs. They are, in short, both wonderful and completely insane.