Japan 2008 Part 4 from Christopher Osborne on Vimeo.

Building, coding, and designing all things spatial while running around trying to fix the political means I didn’t have the time to indulge in the metaphysical aspects of geography. That should change this year, and consider that a promise for proper design, cartography and psychogeography blog posts as well as the usual tech stuff.

As the first holiday since last January, this winter break meant eating, drinking and sleeping a lot. It also gave me the chance to catch up some of the many books and movies I missed out on, over the course of a particularly hectic year.

Tokyo! is a cinamatic tryptich of stories set in the Japanese metropolis, that explore our relationship with the urban environment – “Do we shape cities? Or do cities shape us?” Its a wonderful psychogeographic journey through issues of alienation and confinement in the concrete playgrounds of the city. (If you’re in a hurry you can skip to the video at the end).

It all opens with a rather beautiful map of Japan.

And quickly segues into the outsider’s typical image of Tokyo; neon, towers and noise. A big, bright, bustling city that looks fun! fun! fun! The imagined space is somewhat in contrast to the monochrome reality above.

And this being art-house cinema the main issues being explored here are alienation and confinement. In particular, a sewer dwelling creature called

With exceptional use of out of place sounds to create the feeling of unease, in a familiar urban environment.

And then we have the hikikomori. A growing problem, particularly with young Japanese who isolate themselves from society and confine themselves inside the home. Urban ghosts.

Which gets so out of hand, that the only answer is robotic pizza delivery.

Is techonology to blame? Or are we just seeking easy technological fixes to deeper societal problems that need to be addressed? It certainly creates some spookily empty urban environments.

I thoroughly recommend watching the clips of the best psychogeographic visuals that I’ve cut into a video (click for HD)

The Japanese have not been so keen on the whole Google Street View phenomenon. Apparently, the cameras are too high for Japanese buildings/streets, and are peering into people’s gardens etc.

So the ingenius answer is? Yes, a lower camera -