A week in Tokyo, and with it the sound of your footfalls on familiar streets, always different, always the same. Cross the wide bridge to Takashimaya Times Square, feeling the ground beneath you tremble from the passage of commuter trains. Great monuments to consumerism before you, towering and heady commerce behind, while the wide expanse of train tracks below seem to lead in only one direction: away.

Past the station, then across Yasukuni Blvd., advancing briskly into the noisy, glittering jungle known as Kabuki-cho. Kyaku-hiki line the streets like a well-coiffed gauntlet, ignoring you because you're white, or angling over swiftly, because you're white. Many of the Nigerians now call me by name, even though they've never managed to coax me inside the assorted R&B clubs and strip joints that employ them. Familiarity can be a real mixed bag. Then you pass Half-Time, giving Fumi-kun and smile and a wave through the open front door. The Super Climax guys hail you as you pass with heavily-accented, toothy entreaties ("Hey, Mr. M, how about tonight, my friend? Heh-heh, yeah man.") and then you round the corner, left-right-and-right-again before stepping fully into the bosom of healthy Shinjuku-style sleaze, The Ole.

It's where my friends are, and where they once were. So somehow I always find my way back. But less often now that Miguel is gone. And the city that swallowed him up is still full of surprises. Fear and glory and the unexpected all bound up together and trembling, like a first date or a hijack. Beautiful and sublime, with occasionally a little bloodshed.

Friends and lovers, work and play, all part of a week in Tokyo. The city seems at once so small yet so vast. You never see the same face twice, and you never see a new face. Pass a fellow gaijin on the street, all the while sharing stolen glances that betray your shared lust for anonymity, and the irrestible curiosity you loathe so in the Japanese throng around you. Usually you just ignore each other, clinging desperately to private fantasies of blending into some blurry ethnic backdrop where blue, deep-set eyes get lost in the clumsy pixelation of larger like-skinned numbers.

So this is Tokyo, and I love it more and more. These are a few of the reasons why. And the crows, of course. Bold, black and vociferous are the crows in Tokyo. Big as hounds. They sing out to me in the early morning as I walk to the station, their throaty greetings seeming to say, "Die, Michael! Die! Hahaha! I'll peck your eyeballs out!" I invariably end up running the last 100 meters or so, briefcase pulled tightly over my head.

But a respite from the special magic of Tokyo is nice once in a while, too. Read about a recent one in the latest Communique.