Tokyo is known as the lasrgest mega-city in the world.
It is a city with millions of population that is still increasing.
It is one of the centers in the global economy and unique cultures.
That fact itself makes this city an exception from the rest of the worlds big cities.
But another factor that I think makes Tokyo so much different is that the city, its majority of the areas, are created without an organized urban-development plannings.
If you look at the city such as London, Paris (or simply majority of the European cities), Washington DC and New York, you can tell that the first planners of those cities had a clear vision about what the cities would and should look like in the future.
And their strict regulation with the use of colors, materials, distribtution of spaces are still in practice.
I know Europeans are very careful about the visual image of their cities and therefore their neighborhoods are always kept as beautiful scenery (they often have problems with cleanliness but I'm not going to touch on it for this entry).
But in Tokyo, that is not a case.
Historically Japanese don't have a sense of urban development and therefore most of the buildings are in disorder. Except for some new cities such as Yokohama Minato Mirai and Sinjuku Fukutoshin, everything is disconnected.
There was actually a plan to develop Tokyo with urban development plan right after the WW2, when the whole city had to start everything out from ashes.
But the plan was abandoned by huge critisism by local farmers, which I think is a pity.
But because of no planning, I think Tokyo has a very unique atmosphere of urban chaos and this itself has one way of attractiveness.
So, I like Tokyo this way.