I’m still reeling from my first trip to Japan. Among many unforgettable experiences, to see Tokyo all lit up at night, up close and personal, triggered something deep in my Gen X sci-fi nerd soul. For someone who’s grown up on Blade Runner, William Gibson and 2000AD, the neon sprawl and kanji characters are kind of like a musical chord that echoes throughout every idea of what “the future” was meant to be. 

It still looks like the future, too, no matter how much of a cliché it may have become. But the strange thing is, if you look closer there’s an awful lot of what feels like anachronism. Alongside the bright lights, slick infrastructure and gigabit wifi, there’s a lot of make-do-and-mend, a lot of home-laminated handwritten signs, gaffer tape, fax machines, CDs: technologies that serve a specific purpose perfectly well, so why would you replace them? Add to that the ubiquity of older traditions still – the street corner shrines, folk figurines, celebrations of the cherry trees – and, to dazed Western eyes at least, it feels like a constant flux of past, present and future all at once.