Tokyo
I was in Tokyo in late February/early March on behalf of CLSA, who invited me to make presentations and meet with clientele at their 4th Japan Forum. The Forum was held at the Grand Hyatt – not the Park Hyatt of Lost in Translation fame – although I stayed at the nearby Japanese-styled Hotel Okura. Both are in the Roppongi district, whose nightlife is so well captured in that movie. Of course, there’s always the danger of “otaku” in Japan – the nerdish, manga and anime-obsessed individuals described in William Gibson’s Idoru (and more recently in Peter Carey’s Wrong About Japan) – and I decided that I’d really better not post any Japanese nightlife photos here. But many thanks to Jessamyn Larrabee of the Boston Company for sharing the spectacle and documenting it.
On a more serious note, I also took the shinkansen (bullet train) down to Hiroshima, and visited the Peace Gardens, the Museum and the Atomic Dome. The museum displays are particularly moving and thought provoking – but I was also surprised about the sheer physical beauty of the place (i.e., the mountains, the sea, the islands and rivers). That fact is not often noted, given the focus on the tribulations of war and other such unfortunate human endeavors.