Tokyo

They say that if you draw a circle stretching out 50km from Tokyo station, on a weekday, there will be anywhere between 30 and 35 million people. Almost double the population of Australia in one city. There are stations here through which a million people pass through a day. a million.

Concrete. Ridiculous amounts of it. Buildings. Erected with no thought for their neighbour, in competition with each other for space and attention, attractive is not usually a word one would use to describe Tokyo. To be fair though I guess the same could be said of suburbia in Sydney.

Anyway you do get these little oasis' where someone has actually pulled their finger out and tried.

Saturday we got a call from Nobuko's family to say that g'ma was on her death bed. We raced up to the hospital and were met outside by the rest of the family to be told she was on the mend. But then we went up to her room and well...I guess no 93 year old is going to look hot in her nighty with tubes coming out of every imaginable orifice. There was a definitite communication breakdown though somewhere along the line. I'm still not sure whether she's sick or fine.

The locals tell me that Japanese couples have this learned ability to communicate without words but they are so disfunctional here communication wise that sometimes I am left in complete awe.

Anyway the photo above was Nobuko and her cousin communicating in this lovely little restaurant after the hospital visit.