Featured - Friday, June 13, 2008 1:34 - 0 Comments

That shopping mall looks familiar

Tokyo is always one of those places to admire from afar. It appears in movies, music videos, and video games– the latter being the medium I just consumed. I recently dusted off my copy of Project Gotham Racing after watching The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (one of those brainless, shiny movies that are easy to love no matter how bad the plot may be). “Drifting”, a style of racing where the driver of the car glides, skids, or ‘drifts’ around corners instead of hugging the turn, is something I’ve been a fan of, yet too chicken to do in reality. Digitally, however, I’ll train with glee.

Naturally, like many racing games, PGR contained race tracks in Tokyo, a place I visited recently in March of 2008. Unlike places with notable landmarks (ie., London, racing around Big Ben, etc), there was a slight bit of familiarity to this particular course: Shinjuku.

I wrecked my McClaren around a turn because I looked beyond the barrier to a familiar sight: the I-Land shopping complex and lighted circular architectural detail that I photographed and posted online. Whoa. Creepy.

It wasn’t, however, until I drifted around another corner, putting myself squarely in the line of sight of the Subaru building, just up the road from– yep, there it is: Odakyu, a massive shopping complex above the entrance to the Shinjuku station, the busiest train station in the world.

Rendered in perfect detail (or as perfect as you can get at 200 mph), I saw all the familiar sights indelibly etched in my brain a few months earlier.

And CRASH.

Crashing into guard rails is always a sure-fire way to break a daydream. I plowed my McClaren into the rail that guides drivers into a downward inclined double cloverleaf where the taxis arrive to pick up passengers… and a place I stood many nights when I was too lazy to walk back to the hotel.

My realities may be mixed up, but the memories and familiarity are the same.