My Japanese Anachronism

After being stuck for 12 hours in a row in the smallest space I could possibly fit in, stuck between my mum and a 40 years-old -and loud- Japanese dude who was pretty much a visual expression of what I imagine is the Japanese pop culture: dyed hair, colourful shirt, interesting mix-match of jewellery; I landed in Narita, Tokyo.
Airports are similar to one another, no matter where you land. Except maybe, the extreme niceness and politeness of the indigenous population...
Japanese are calm, courteous, helpful and, to my highest pleasure, tidy and clean!

The weather is what I expected: extremely warm and humid... It smells and strangely feels like in my beloved Spanish village, where I spent all the summers of my childhood, Altea...

Finding our way to our hotel, using all kind of transportation modes and walking in all kind of places, gave me a good, whole, first glimpse of what Tokyo is. It is a rather strange mixture of what I have already seen.
The streets are organised squarely and are rather large... just like those in the USA or Canada. They are no cars parked in the streets, parking is organised like in NY; there are special plots all over the city where you pay to put your car.
The subway's architecture and shallowness also reminded me of NY's.
The architecture, just like the ambient air and feeling, is just like Spain or some corners of Latin America... it is crazy, I really felt like walking in a Spanish neighbourhood of the Costa Blanca, unless I was 7000 miles away...

Another resemblance that hit me is that they ride bikes just like in Holland, they love it and streets are organised in a rather similar way in order to allow people to ride easily and safely.
The orderliness in Japan reminds me of Britain, this all weird and almost magic love for rules and the deep, alienated respect Japanese, or Britons, have for them.

So far, I have not found any resemblance with my home-county... unless may be, the passion of the Japanese for good food.

I saw cemeteries that looked like nothing I have seen before. I know that Japanese have a sacred respect for their dead and they sort of worship them... The ancients are of the highest importance and this week is Obon week, the week celebrating the dead, during which Japanese travel to visit their families.
Japanese are eclectic in term of spirituality, a lot of syncretism if going on here... I would argue that they have a higher sense of the spiritual than the rest of the Western world... which is what I can compare them with in term of development and progress.

Japan is this strange anachronistic mix of traditions, ancient values and beliefs, with this extreme love for newness in technologies that are higher than high; for fashion, as they are always looking for the next stuff that would be the trend and which they abandon almost immediately, because the rhythm of life and discovery is proper hectic...

I am living in a proper anachronism, lost tracks of time with the 12 hours jet-lag (in my face!)

I strangely feel home here...

I think I do because of the animated cartoons I watched during my childhood. Creamy Mami, Ranma 1/2, Dragon Ball Z. I feel like I have been here before, I already walked down these streets, already saw been to these places, seen those ads, heard these people, and ate this food...

Men were these white terry towels on their heads, old people wear black (also like in Spain BTW), and women are hiding from the sun under these cute and tiny sunshades... I told you, it is familiar, I have been here before...