Temporary Tokyo And Its Shifting Visions Of The Future

"But glimpsing the future in Japan isn't just about first sightings of cool gadgets. It's also about seeing a city change -- fast -- as if photographed in time lapse. The city is shockingly unstable. Buildings disappear, replaced by new ones. Entire districts come and go, seemingly overnight. Roppongi is the hot district just now, with a new art museum and the massive Tokyo Midtown complex drawing people to the formerly sleazy neighborhood. Other districts, like Odaiba, rise spectrally and speculatively from Tokyo Bay on artificial land."

"Tokyo is a city where yesterday's tomorrow is constantly being replaced by today's. Down the block from where I'm staying stands the Nakagin Capsule Tower, the world's first stackable capsule building, constructed in 1970 by Metabolist Kisho Kurokawa, and now overshadowed by Shiodome and scheduled for demolition. If Kurokawa had succeeded in his mayoral bid earlier this year, the building might have been reprieved (I personally think it should be a UNESCO World Heritage site). But that just isn't the Tokyo way. The Tokyo way is to try stuff, trash it, then try something else. Whether it's the legacy of earthquakes or Buddhism, everything here is understood to be temporary. It's best not to get too attached. The spirit of what you lose will probably pop up somewhere else."