Correction Appended: March 12, 2009
Wandering the streets of Tokyo's Roppongi district on a wet night, you know where film director Ridley Scott got the inspiration for his dystopian Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Multicolored neon; disembodied voices from video screens; a freeway over your head; the smells and sounds of bars and noodle shops; fake fur everywhere. Then, the next morning, you look out a window and see another Japan: a hedge in which each leaf seems to have been clipped by hand; a couple of rocks placed, in some Zen way, just so.
In many years of visiting Japan, I've...