There’s a statue out­side of Shibuya sta­tion ded­i­cated to Hachiko, the leg­endary Akita who faith­fully waited for her owner every night, even long after he passed away.

I didn’t think much about it until my flight in April from SFO to NRT was in the air, but I spent almost ever other sum­mer in Japan when I was grow­ing up. After 8 years away (far too long in ret­ro­spect), would it still feel the same? Had the long eco­nomic malaise sapped the coun­try of its vitality?

I was happy to see that while much of the urban land­scape of Tokyo had changed—in par­tic­u­lar, mega-projects like Rop­pongi Hills, Tokyo Mid­town, and Omote­sando Hills were all new to me—the essen­tial char­ac­ter of place hadn’t. The dynamic energy, fre­netic pace, and fan­tas­tic food were still there, just enhanced by the con­tin­ued organic evo­lu­tion of the city.

And that’s what I like most about the place, the jar­ring dis­con­ti­nu­ity—no doubt a legacy of the urban plan­ning done by war­lords from cen­turies past. Unlike other cities, Tokyo jux­ta­poses new and old, with seem­ingly lit­tle con­cern for con­ti­nu­ity. Per­haps it’s wabi-sabi writ large. Regard­less, I’m look­ing for­ward to going back in June—and much more in the future. Like Hachiko, Japan waits patiently for me to return.

Even though I was in Lon­don for busi­ness, I did get a chance to indulge in some pho­tog­ra­phy one night before head­ing off to din­ner. Check out this album to see the results.

On a camera-nerd note, the Ricoh GR Dig­i­tal II makes for a pretty nice range-finder-like dig­i­tal cam­era. The high ISO grain is fairly pleas­ing and the range of man­ual con­trol is rar­ity on a dig­i­tal cam­era this small. It’s emi­nently pocket-able and will be a nice side arm com­ple­ment to my even­tual replace­ment dig­i­tal SLR.