The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan on the planet.
And boasting over 37 million people, a GDP of almost $1.8 trillion and a high-tech industry that is the world's envy, it is not hard to see why.
Looming city skyscrapers made of steel, glass and concrete watch over millions below as they travel to and from their daily lives. Endless urban sprawl stretches out over terrain that has been hidden for so long that the ground beneath can no longer be recalled. Century-old sites of historical and religious origin dot its plains, mountains and streets, crowned by the likes of the Meiji Shrine and the Senso-Ji Buddhist temple.
And yet, even with all this, the Capital Region processes something worth more than all of these combined.
Human Creativity
Where New York stakes its claim as the prime bastion of musicals and innovator of design, it too issues its declaration in sleepless beauty that it alone holds the title of The Big Apple.
As Paris' runways land fashion directly into the homes of innumerable millions and its workforce of ingenuity invent and sew textiles the world has yet to behold, none argue whether it is worth the acclaim of Capital of Fashion.
And while London, in glory-soaked tradition, showcases the antique arts of opera, ballet and theatre, it does not forget the modern crafts of film and music it gave birth to and brought to prevalence. Thus, there is no person alive who can discredit its role as the Inventor of Entertainment.
Tokyo may not have the bigwig designers and eye-catching Broadway of New York. It might lack the fashion might and culinary expertise of Paris. And it could possibly fall short of the old arts of stage and the new arts of media that London taunts.
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But it enters the podium and conquers the play in other ways.
Artists press pen to paper, soon pen to pixel and create new designs and styles that take the world by storm.
Mangakas scribe worlds into being with literature and picture, translating and shipping them across the globe, causing a radical shift towards a new age of comics.
Animators craft scenes and movements so fluid that it shakes the foundations of Hollywood as the new style of Anime flies off shelves into the hands of Western audiences.
Idols dance their one-thousandth routine on Japanese TV and their first on U.S. screens as they leap across the Pacific and challenge the methods of the established.
Singers and models are flown from Tokyo to Moscow, Paris, Berlin and London to take over foreign runways and perform before new crowds.
Actors and actresses of homemade dramas are subbed and shipped worldwide, streamed straight into the living rooms of millions for their enjoyment.
This is the new age of cultural integration, the likes of which we have never seen before.
And as the internet breaks down barriers, translators open up new routes, and our eagerness grows to uncontrollable levels. Our human creativity reaches its apex, and as Japan's creative mind looks to the world, the world's creative minds look back.
The desire to take a bite of the United States' Big Apple.
The need to touch down and take over the runways of France's Capital of Fashion.
The want to enter British theatres and seize the aged and ageless arts of the Inventor of Entertainment.
This is the era of Tokyo, the dawn of a new age of creativity.
And it will start with one actress.