It's actually funny. When I was 17, I wrote this about Tokyo:

"Like a fine sheet of velvety violet, the sky

hung above the city repelled by the sheer glare of the neon, the energetic pulsating rhythms of life that danced below.

Row after row, the strings of celestial sparks lined the district of Harajuku, lighting a stretched path to the distant horizon. The air was chilled crisp and crackled with the thin fragility of dry ice. Vague movements of the anonymous darkness along the sidewalks flowed and the decibels of energy, oscillated like sound waves.

Tokyo was awake once again."

I guess what strikes me as funny is that I have recently been to Tokyo and the difference between what I imagined Tokyo would represent for me or look like, and what it actually was, was two completely different worlds.

I would never have dreamt of going to Japan under these circumstances. And the Tokyo I saw was muted, slowly moving under the humid weather and steadily recovering from the March 2011 earthquake - the Ginza lights were dimmed because of energy saving and there lacked that sense of vibrancy. Certainly my romanticised view of the energy dancing on the streets were far from reality.

It's funny how time changes things and seeing where life's path takes you...