Plan your trip with our routes

Tokyo, capital of Japan.

 
I want to be Japanese. I want to be able to walk like them, quietly, almost not touching the floor. I want to give and take things with that sweetness, with both hands and a gentle head gesture, as if everything was a little treasure. I want to live in their houses, with that light that wrap everything up instead of illuminate it. I want the pleasure of feeling their tatamies in my bare feet and sleep in their futons. I wan to eat in their bars with a Japanese cook that prepares sushi piece by piece, as if each maki was a unique jewel. I want to walk in their gardens, surrounded by those trees that you only get after years of patience and tons of caresses.

 
However, as everybody else, Japanese people have their own dark history. Years ago they thought that they were the chosen to liberate Asia from the western colonialism. And substitute it by theirs, they forgot to say of course. They paid the price. In the gross, they had around three million casualties. It is not free to start a war with China, Russia, Korea, and the United States, at the same time, and they did. The typhoons, that twice in the XV century saved them form the Mongol, this time stayed at home. They called them, then, divine winds, kamikazes in Japanese.

Lately things are not going well either. They have been in a continuous crisis for the last 10 years. A passive bureaucracy and a galloping corruption have plunged Japan into a recession, making them break with some of their traditions. Now, jobs are not for life, and there are not groups of companies that help each other, as they did in the past. They are actually trying the “every man for himself”, the ugly side of capitalism.

We can only hope that the new generations raised by Manga, are able to overcome it and they do it, as usual, better than anybody else. They were the ones who invented the phrase “copy with pride”; which means, take the best things form the others and, if you can, improve it. Always being thankful, because they are very polite people. This is the reason why they have been the only ones being able to combine the best of both western and oriental cultures. We should learn from them. Globalization should be a highway in two directions. We should not only get cheap products, raw materials or illegal immigrants, but also, if it is possible, some of their cooks. Sushi is soooooooo good!!!!

Japan photo gallery
Things to do in Tokyo
Tourist information to travel to Tokyo