A jetlagged Monday morning after flying back from Tokyo yesterday.  Gary Owen and I had been invited over to research a possible project as guests of the wonderful New National Theatre.  I'd never been but had often dreamed of Tokyo.  My Tokyo was mainly in my mind - coming from writers such as Murakhami and Oe more than TV or even film.  But like New York, Tokyo is burned as an image into our heads from early on, so arriving is like stepping into a movie. 

All the more so, as I'd been reading Murakhami's latest book 1Q84 on the plane. The book opens with a scene on an elevated highway above Tokyo. The heroine is trapped in traffic on her way to kill a man and doesn't want to be late for the appointment - so she climbs out of her cab and scrambles down several flights of emergency steps at the edge of the freeway to reach land.  As our airport bus drove into Tokyo we found ourselves on just such an elevated highway (there are hundreds of them criss crossing the air of the city).  I started to look for emergency steps - but fortunately our bus kept moving, and I didn't have to scramble down to land-level or commit any homicides. 

At what you'd call street level if the streets weren't sometimes in the sky, the city is both more ordinary and more exceptional than the dream.  It's not as shiny and new as perhaps we imagine - certainly not the high-tech fantasy of a city that exists in China now - it's more run-in, more day-to-day. At the same time the juxtaposition of playful design detail with sheer human mass makes each inch of the city worth poring over.

The theatre scene is exciting. We were lucky enough to see a top-class programme of Kabuki (4 and a half hours long - but joyfully excessive throughout) as well as a range of contemorary work. Theatre makers are passionate and well informed - very open to what is happening worldwide in theatre, but also rightly proud of and ambitious for Japanese work.

It was great to get a chance to chat to people about our work in Wales - there was huge enthusiasm for our model and programme and I think there's definitely scope for Japan-Wales collaboration.  Now if we can just get the A470 up on some stilts...