Tokyo is full of fun and exciting distraction, cool stuff, fascinating stuff, all these things I can experience at the stores, and take the experience home with me should I choose to buy any little thing!! I think this is it. Arts and beauty are all integrated into experience of retail consumption nowadays. We don’t need to go to any amusement parks, museums. We just go shopping or dining at tens and thousands of places available in Tokyo, and even if we don’t buy anything, we are stimulated in all 5 senses. Like right now, foods and drinks smell so good in this pleasant cafe, polite people around who don’t bother you but make you feel like you are still connected by choosing to be here, nice music in the background, stimulating movements outside of the window I am facing, cold outside but warm inside. My sight, taste, sound, touch, smell, all these senses are completely happy.
In big cities of advanced countries, because so much of our experience comes from this kind of thing, being outside of home or work and experience pleasant things, we are divorcing home and work from the social third place. In Japan, increasingly home is the place to be alone, or with your immediate family, and a few very good friends, and to rest. Workplace is what? Maybe it should become place to shut out all the others to focus on creating shape on what you do as work, such as to outpour your idea on CAD, sketch, writing? And then to have “work talk” meetings, to talk about stuff you shouldn’t in public about your competition, your client?
FUJIKO SUDA 