Someone recently brought up the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi. I hadn't thought about it in years. It's about acceptance - finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence. I think the Japanese are doing better with this latest economic downturn because of this cultural and collective mind-set. They don’t operate from a material base as we do. Here, identity is all about the car, the body...things – material success. That's a bad investment.
Tokyo is on a demolishing old buildings bender, this post-war hotel is slated to go. The tea room is filled with old school gentry every afternoon having tea and "cakee".