JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I’ve been in Japan for eight days to attend meetings and do research for the World Domination Project. Having kicked it over in my head for many years and published a magazine about it, the time has come to announce it to the rest of the world. It is certainly much, much saner than anything else that’s going on in the world today.

After the relative quiet of Yokohama, I moved to Tokyo. It was my first time in Tokyo. It’s a shock. Immediately I thought of what the Queen of Hearts said to Alice (in Wonderland): “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.” Think of New York or Paris, then ratchet up the intensity.

The mass transit system is impressive: both efficient and mind-boggling. First you have to learn to decipher the train codes. This requires standing in front of the huge announcement boards while the light washes over you and you feel like a complete idiot. The older I get, the more I realize the futility of trying to rationalize everything in real time. These days I just absorb as much information as I can and wait for my brain to put it all together (that’s what sleep is for). At some point something clicks and you go “Aha!” and things make sense, or at least seem less random.

I’d been saving David Mitchell’s novel Number 9 Dream for my first visit to Tokyo. It’s been sitting in my bag, unread, because there is so much to process. I didn’t have to read about the sensory assault of being in Tokyo when I was undergoing that very assault. When I checked out of the hotel in Yokohama I accidentally left the book behind, but this being Japan, I simply emailed the hotel and they forwarded the book to me in Tokyo.

My great achievement on this trip was going to Shinjuku by myself, finding the main store of Kinokuniya Books, and making it back to Shibuya for a meeting. I felt like at any point, I could disappear into a crowd and never be seen again. Entering the Tokyo transit system is like going into the transporter in Star Trek: you dissolve into particles which are transmitted through the vacuum of space and reconstituted on the surface of another world. Only it takes minutes or hours, during which you consider the possibility that you won’t be put back together.

The hotel room is tiny but well-appointed. You have to do a parkour move to get to the window, but there is a bathtub, a fully automated toilet, and a washing machine and dryer. The coffee is excellent everywhere, and the convenience stores are awesome. The food! The clothes! I didn’t have time to visit a cat cafe, but I notice the English daily carries cat adoption notices. A 20 meter-high Unicorn Gundam statue was unveiled on the waterfront. On a Monday at three in the afternoon I watched the Bavarian State Opera do Tannhauser. That is a story for later.