Rain falls on Jinbōchō’s streets as I settle into my hotel for the final stage of this Japan sojourn. For two weeks, I’ve travelled the country—first slowly through Kyūshū, the south-westernmost of its islands, then east along the route of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. The line compresses time and space between several major cities, and however many times I take it, I’m left slightly in awe. These include Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and Okayama, where I paused briefly before returning to Tokyo.

Kyūshū revealed a landscape at once calming and humbling. Moving through its countryside, I caught myself wondering, as I often do, whether it might be time to leave city life behind for somewhere quieter and greener. Yet before long, I’d find myself missing the concentrated energy of urban life—the density of movement and exchange, the way ideas and ambition converge to create a feeling of perpetual motion and open possibility.

Similar thoughts surface when I arrive in smaller cities. Fukuoka can start to persuade you that Tokyo might be dispensable. Like many Japanese cities, it contains the same familiar systems of comfort and convenience, only arranged on a more manageable scale. There, I imagine a life with wider latitude—living costs eased, distances shortened, decisions simplified—yet still animated by the city’s magnetism and prosperity.

Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and Okayama are largely monocentric—cities where economic, civic, and cultural life converges around the main station or historic core. Peripheral districts exist, yet they orbit as satellites rather than stand-alone hubs. Tokyo, by contrast, is polycentric: a metropolis composed of multiple centres rather than a single dominant heart. Each forms its own concentration of offices, commerce, and culture. Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Marunouchi, for instance, are designated fukutoshin (副都心)—officially recognised subcentres within the wider metropolitan area.