At first glance, one might believe that Japan is a place of extremes. Its cityscapes drip with brain-blurring neon, and pop culture mania verges on cult-like status. Its capital has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any city on Earth, and its trains are faster than anyone else’s.
But to take those facts in isolation is to miss the point. It’s not the extremes so much as what they counter. Together, each element thrives in delicate symbiosis. The Japan of sacred mountains and Zen temples and the Japan of skyscrapers and karaoke don’t just tolerate one another – each owes its peculiarities to the existence of the other.