Tokyo

An elderly usher called out the free counter numbers at immigration, directing the travel-weary visitor with his unsmiling face and a bow. A human touch in the no-nonsense, all grey Narita International Airport. 

Clean and strange toilets with heated seats and many little buttons to play with greeted us, and we would come to expect them everywhere we went in Japan. Built in deodorisers, retractable sprays of differing lengths, pressure control, temperature control, air blasts, even flushing sounds are at the fingertips in these magic contraptions of custom gratification. Flushing sounds were apparently introduced in Japan because women would constantly flush the toilets while in use to cover embarrassing noises. Sensor devices called "Otohimes", after the beautiful goddess of Japanese mythology, the daughter of Ryujin, god of the sea, were invented to mimic flushing sounds and save water. And so, as modern legend would have it, was born the present-day Japanese wonder "washlet", spearheaded by the company Toto. 

A spring day breaks at around half-past-four in the land of the rising sun. In the daylight, Tokyo city is fast, spic and span. Tall, narrow buildings line paved footpaths, occupying their entire sites, with tiny slits of space between them. Neat, clad boxes, with precise openings. Signage is unobtrusive and minimal. Black suited men and high heeled women click their way through Gingko tree-lined pavements, setting and keeping up the tempo of the city. Gingko is "a living fossil with a stubborn tenacity…a unique species of tree with no close living relatives", as Wikipedia would have it. Six trees growing within two kilometres of the Hiroshima atom bomb site were among the few living things in the area to survive to this day. Perhaps for this longevity associated with it, Gingko has been used widely in traditional Chinese medicine. It is believed to boost memory and concentration.

The Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures is one of the four independent galleries in the Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan. This spare, elegant box floating on stilts above a welcoming sheet of sunlight-dappled water was our first introduction to Japanese architecture. Designed in 1999 by Taniguchi Yoshio, who also designed the new building for New York's museum of Modern Art, the gallery has a quietly strong presence, complex in its simplicity, perfect in its detailing. The approach across the water is calming, almost meditative. One realises that the seemingly still sheet of water is detailed to gently ripple, and to create, at certain points, the sound of moving water. The ante space to the galleries is a double-volume, vertical steel louvered, glassed space, overlooking the water, masterfully transitioning between outside and in, between permanent preservation of treasures and public exhibition. Horyu-ji is said to be the first Buddhist temple in Japan, founded in 607. Its treasures have found a fitting home in Yoshio's modern day paen to Japanese aesthetics and design sensibility.

In the main gallery, we came back to museum-reality and trooped through an exhibition of the western impressionists. Monet's Water Lilies, Van Gogh's Roses and Paul Signac's pointillistic seascapes are deeply textured, almost high-relief, clunky and hurried in their application of paint when viewed up close, shimmeringly light and cohesive when you step back. 

A lively area in Tokyo, Asakusa is a blend of tradition and modernity. The sixth century Buddhist temple, Senso-ji, the oldest of its kind in the city is located here, its gateway framing the main Junction. The market fronting the temple bustles with shoppers. Across the road is the vertical wood-slatted facade of Kengo Kuma's Asakusa Culture, a Tourist Information Centre built in 2012. Looking like a series of differently sloped, roofed houses piled one on top of the other, the eight-storied building has an interesting section - a vertical tower sliced by differently angled slabs that determine the floor use [such as tiered halls and exhibition spaces]. Equipment is stored in the spaces between roof and floor. The wooden louvers add an interesting texture and warmth to the spaces. An island table held paper and sketch pens of different colours, think and thin, for visitors to scribble notes with. Our first, pleasant encounter with high-quality Japanese stationary. [The pens were left on their table intact, though half-heartedly]. Upstairs, a cafe offered views of the neighbourhood, framed by the vertical wooden slats of the facade.

Kenzo Tange's Yoyogi National Gymnasium was built for the 1964 Summer Olympic Games. The dramatic, sweeping curves of the steel roof appear to drape, tent-like from central supporting cables, providing visual links to the curve of the Japanese pagoda. 

Omotesando is a kilometre-long, Zelkova tree-lined avenue, leading to the Torii [Gate] of the Meiji Shrine. The upmarket shopping street of Tokyo, it is an architectural showcase of sorts, with Tadao Ando's Omotesando Hills, Herzog & de Meuron's Prada building, Toyo Ito's Tod's and Louis Vuitton, Gyre and Dior among others, jostling for attention. 

Ando's Omotesando Hills is an urban regeneration mixed-use project, shopping and residential, that occupies about a quarter of the length of the avenue. Limiting the height of the building to that of the Zelkova trees, Ando buried half of it. The corridors ramp to follow the slope of the street, creating an interesting shopping experience and "Zelkova Terraces", roof gardens that cover an area equivalent to 30% of the land. Another noteworthy design feature is the link to the old, memories preserved in a small corner of the old Bauhaus-styled Dojunkai Apartments that the building replaced. 

The Prada store by Herzog & de Muron makes a strong visual statement in the corner it occupies, with its "bubble wrap" facade of convex, concave and plane glass creating a tactile architecture, drawing passers-by to participate in a game of peek-a-boo. 

Toyo Ito reinterprets the shapes of Omotesando's trees to create criss-crossing lines in concrete on the facade of Tod's Omotesando building. By using concrete, he was able to make the building skin structural, avoiding columns inside. 

The Watari-Um gallery is a finely honed sculpture on a tiny, triangular site. Mario Botta has masterfully created this tight gallery space on five levels. The space restriction has made it a crafted building, chiselled to perfection, the inner logic determining the outer form. An exhibition of photographs by the French artist, JR, was on. Dramatic in his expression, larger than life images were pasted on the building's facade. Visitors could queue up for large format black and white images of themselves on a trademark black-and-white polka dot background - another 'big' gesture, no doubt drawing in the crowds.

There was a nip in the night air as we walked out of the hotel to the eateries along the road. Sushi comes in different forms - neatly packaged like paan, and surprisingly filling despite the deceptive size. Quite a bit of glutinous rice finds its way into the seaweed- wrapped rolls. The care and craft that goes into its preparation elevates it to a special dining experience. And the delicacy of manoeuvring the little parcels from plate to dipping sauce to mouth with chopsticks no doubt adds to the experience. Hot sake, Japanese rice wine, is a warming accompaniment to cold Sushi.  

Reflection on the day that was brought no conclusive thoughts. It was difficult to pin down quintessential Tokyo. Was it the universal image of urbanity seen in most of the architecture that day? The hurrying people setting the pace of the city? The upmarket, yet charming avenue of fashion stores? In the myriad images flashing through the mind, Taniguchi Yoshio's Gallery stood out, neatly wrapped up to be savoured at leisure. Like a carefully prepared parcel of glutinous rice, delicately light and flavourful.

St. Mary's Cathedral stands out against the sky, its glistening panels of stainless steel acting at the same time, as wall and roof. Inside, as a sharp contrast, is an almost cave-like experience of exposed concrete surfaces, split by a muted amber-toned stained glass slit. Kenzo Tange has achieved a building of immense beauty, the rhomboidal plan morphing hyperbolically into a cross at the roof top. That it was built in the sixties, and still looks current, makes it all the more astonishing. 

Urbanity speaks the same language, anywhere in the world and is sometimes a welcome bearing in a strange place. Rafael Vinoly's Tokyo International Forum is a bustling urban forum that could find a place in any metropolitan city in the world. A dramatic sixty metre high hull-shaped glass and steel atrium, with a ramp running along it and criss-crossing bridges connecting and bracing it, is the focus of the forum. The space was teeming with activity due to the various public uses it serves. "International" urban spaces have this quality of of being easily identifiable, easy to slip into. An outdoor plaza was bustling at lunch time, with people queueing up at vintage vans that were hawking food. Thick udon noodles, sticky rice with gravy, beef bowls and minced pork omelettes formed the typical, economical, quick "lunch boxes" that people tucked into, finding a spot in the shade of the trees in the plaza. I got myself a lunch box with noodles and pickled ginger and found a place, focusing more on the people around me than the food, and finding when I'd finished that the slimy noodles hadn't slipped as much through the smooth chopsticks after all. I was getting used to Tokyo, slippery as the experience thus far had been. 

A quick peek at Toyo Ito's Egg of Winds, an installation, was slightly disappointing, as the 16 x 8 metre ellipsoid was not fully functional. Covered with a perforated aluminium plate, below which liquid crystal screens display pictures and news, the installation is said to be stunning at night. For Toyo Ito, the wind is important because it interacts with the environment and the user, making the user aware of surrounding energy. His architecture, and urban sculptures such as the Egg of Winds, is characterised by the ephemeral quality, the lightness and transparency of wind, in a technological context. Seen as it was at daytime, an aluminium egg, "Toyo Itta Motta" as we Mallus promptly named it, turned out to be a good backdrop for a photograph.

The Tokyo Big Sight is an international convention centre designed and contracted by the Government and opened in 1996. Four inverted pyramids clad in Titanium are raised on pylons to make this "Big" Tokyo statement. Cutting edge computer aided technology was used to hoist these large trophies precisely in place. 

Inspired by Issey Miyake's concept in clothing design of "A Piece of Cloth", Tadao Ando devised a roof as a single sheet of folded steel. Like a work of origami, the roof of the 21-21 Design Sight Tokyo folds and bends, sloping to the ground. Inside, the space opens up, with most of the building below ground level. Both a museum and research centre, 21-21 Design Sight is headed by Issey Miyake along with four other Japanese Designers. A visit to the Issey Miyake store in Ginza revealed folded and pleated fabric, and structured clothing, origami-like, drawing clear associations with the 21-21 roof. 

For most architects or students of architecture, Japan is Tadao Ando, and Tadao Ando is Japan. We had seen Omotesando Hills and 21-21, had tried to see, but were refused entry into the Church of Light, and finally came face to face with Tadao Ando at the Hemiji City Museum of Literature. Located on a hill in Hyogo, not far from Tokyo, The Museum buildings overlook the Hemiji Castle, a cultural treasure of Japan. The visual connections and constant dialogue between old and new are studied, intentional. Consisting of two buildings, built at different times, connected by a gently flowing, gradually stepped body of water, the architecture revealed itself slowly. Viewed at sunset, when Ando's trademark exposed concrete surfaces were picking up the deep gold glow of the sky, the whole experience was infused with the glow of recognition. This was it. This had what most strived for. The play with planes and the mastery over movement never fails to amaze in Tadao Ando's spaces - seemingly simple at plan level, but defyingly dramatic at experiential level. There would be more of Ando to come on the trip, but for now, we were to be back in the real world.

Tokyo is not an easily comprehensible city. The Metro map has at least 15 distinct colours criss-crossing in a dense network. It has a lot to offer. From the colourfully loud nightlife of Roppongi district to the upmarket Omotesando and Ginza, from ancient shrines to advanced robotics, from a maze of below-ground development to sky-high observation decks, from the bigness of the Big Sight to the quiet detail of the Horyu-ji Gallery water sheet, Tokyo is a study in contrasts. Blatantly borrowing from the west, and making the borrowings its own. If one were to pick a lasting image that is quintessentially Tokyo, it would have to be the Toto "Washlets". Refined, technologically advanced, precise, borrowing from the west, yet linked to cultural norms and, to cap it all, seriously playful.

Tokyo - through the looking glass.