Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Annoying city-design nerds online like to say that everyone into the subject is "either radicalised by Amsterdam, or by Tokyo". I visited Amsterdam several years ago and was personally very disappointed: everything that is loved about Amsterdam by both the left and right wing of the urban planning dialectic turned out to actually be very annoying, and contrary to the way I like cities to be. The bicycle-first mentality made walking more stressful than even car-centric cities, the old architecture was neither as extensive, beautiful nor even as old as many places elsewhere in Britain or Europe, and the relaxed laws surrounding narcotics made every green-space a venue for congregations of addicts, anti-socials and general rogues. So as I flew into Haneda Airport I was ready for my preconceived vision of Tokyo to be resoundingly repudiated, and to a large extent it was. I don't have time now to go into the details of Japanese urban planning, but I want to describe the good, the bad and the ugly from the biggest city on Earth.
To start let's talk about transport; and sufficed to say that getting around the metropolis of Tokyo is so incredibly easy. For a city of its scale, density and seemingly haphazard layout, the speed at which one can zoom from one point to any other is truly a marvel of efficiency that puts the overrated Germans to shame. I am someone who enjoys planning and executing succinct operations, and so long as you maintain complete focus on the task of navigating the warrens of underground tunnels and decoding the various platform displays Tokyo is a place where your every plan can be carried out with an ecstatic precision. Many people who have visited before me have noted on Tokyo's "infamously complex" system of public transport, but personally I found it very easy to get used to: Check which 1-3 trains you need to get before you leave, remember their name/colour, and then just follow the arrows to your destination. I guess you could get caught out by the "special service" trains that skip stations at first, but once you grasp how they work you can quickly start using them to your advantage (ie skipping the first arriving train for the second to either arrive faster or avoid crowds). This system, unlike transport in many Europeans cities, makes no attempt to coddle the traveller: transfers are planned to the second, platforms require you to stand in the exact right spot to get on. Any wrong move and you will miss your train, and no one is apologising to you for that. Its just exciting. But this amazing efficiency is spurred on by the primary overarching theme of what Tokyo the city embodies to me, and that is an unhindered Victorian capitalist spirit unseen in Europe for many decades.
What I mean by this, is that Tokyo is run on one rule only, and that is viability. Nothing is sacred here (except the temples and shrines), and the city will eat your house, or your office, or your school in order to replace it with something new and better for itself. Constructions are constantly coming and going: new infrastructure, new buildings, new rules. There are very few "historic districts" like Europe is flush with and Americans yearn for: even famous "ancient districts" like Asakusa almost entirely consist of new-builds, just in a vernacular style. The Japanese mind has no place for permanence: "the transience of existence, "a sensitivity of ephemera", "mono no aware". Such phrases ring as poetic truisms when heard only through literature and philosophy, but when seen actualised in Japan they are viscerally real and, from the perspective of a provincial Englishman, callous, unsentimental, unkind & unnecessary. After all we in Britain will do whatever we can to protect the old in our country. We will endure economic or social hits to preserve that which we believe is worth preserving; whether that be an ancient Norman barn, Iron-Age sheep-dip or particularly rare species of worm. Japan however has very little of this mindset. They will of course preserve monuments of national importance such as temples or castles, but even these places are themselves transient and constantly rebuilt anew: Osaka Castle, for example, is an entirely fabricated concrete structure with mediaeval facades. I see this philosophy as akin to how Victorian Britain worked. Each businessman competing with the next to build the most glorious and profitable enterprise uncaring of what ancient woodland he crushed or mediaeval village he transformed: each tube line battling against the others for economic supremacy in the what was then the world's largest metropolis just as Tokyo is today.
However while I can't help but admire the fantastic engine that is Tokyo, it is unattractive to me in many areas.. A nickname that seems very fitting here is that of the "Concrete Jungle". Most noticeably at first when arriving is the near total lack of greenery. No trees line the streets like in London, green spaces are few, far between and generally have limited open areas when they do exist. Parks are either private and fee-paying, or heaving with people. Ueno Park is "Tokyo's Hyde Park", but is really only as green as your standard London suburb, with no grass, few benches and only really consisting of trees and bushes lining a pedestrianised road (although I will say this exceeds America's definition of a "park"). The second part of the nickname (or first I guess) is that of "concrete", and boy does Japan love concrete. Since 95% of buildings are both relatively newly built, and only meant to last a decade or so they are more often than not built as utilitarian concrete blocks with little character nor outward appeal. Of course what is inside is often immaculately designed and lovingly kept, but the endless sea of concrete high-rises plastered in loud adverts introduces one into a mad world without respite. A chaotic realm of perfect order that is both exhilarating and efficient in short spurts, but exhausting and maddening for longer stays. Once you realise the true, unimaginably expansive complex web of urbanity that spreads out for a hundred miles in every direction you can't help but feel trapped. Without those crucial handles of nature or history that keep you grounded, you can easily be broken by that dreamscape of concrete and neon.
