"The City of the Future"
I grew up in late twentieth and early twenty-first century Tokyo.
First, it's crowded. Houses are compact with lots of hidden shelving space. Everyone is built on top of one another.
Second, it touts itself as the city of the future. Its transit and train system is fast and deadly advanced. It has tall sheets of metal buildings and even the smallest shops have neon signs. Cars crowd past in the streets. Honking, zooming, shouting, the smells of smoke and gasoline.
Third, the color. The sheer scope of the people you can find in Tokyo is enormous. People of all types and all colors, in garment ranging from uber traditional to super out there and strange, is available on every street corner. Tokyo has the most bizarre novelties, among them themed cafes and cat cafes. The most famous red light district is also in Tokyo. The arcades and pachinko parlors are endless.
I am a city girl. I am independent and comfortable traveling anywhere, I know which places to avoid at which times, and not much fazes me. I carry pepper spray in my bag and keep on high guard on trains, subways, buses, and trolleys going up and down streets.
I love experiencing all that Tokyo has to offer, especially with big groups of high school friends.
I also have an ingrained modern-city-girl skepticism. I hate dramatic reality TV, I hate feminine TV and magazines, and I despise Japan's highly prevalent amount of psychics. Yes, I've already said that I believe I can see ghosts.
But I don't see myself as a psychic. I don't try to make money off of, make predictions from, or control the dead people that I see. That's what's most despicable about psychics for me. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they believe in something. I believe in Buddhism just as much as in ghosts myself. In Japan, there is not as much friction between "religious" and "nonreligious" as there is in the West anyway.
But I am a city girl at heart, always and forever, and I look at everything with a keen, critical, and skeptical eye. If something works, I always want to know why. I never take anything at face value. In this way, I am hopeless.