Inside Out

By Adam Brownstein – January 30, 2026 – Tokyo, Japan

Two important events in human history coincided with the occasion of my eighth birthday, February 10th 1978.  The first was the release of Van Halen’s self-titled inaugural album.  From its initial fade in of “Runnin’ With The Devil” to its bluesy send off with “Ice Cream Man”, the LP was a simple and profound lynchpin of my epiphonic upbringing.  In the modern age I find myself cruising around the summer streets of Tokyo, blasting “Eruption” in recognition that there are only three good things that the Netherlands has ever shared with the rest of the world;  capitalism, Stolwijker cheese and Eddie Van Halen.

In local Norcal news, my birthday coincided with our thrid grade field trip to San Francisco’s fabled China Town.  It was just after the Chinese New Year celebration welcoming in (like 2026) the Year of the Horse, and the hilly environs bordered by Keary and Clay streets mired in a kind of gorgeously sleepy energy.  Heavy rain systems that had swept across the Pacific made our arrival into the experience more exciting and memorable.  

Beyond the inclement weather, what stuck with me over the years was the aromatic nature of the field trip.  One of our first stops was the ascent of a dark and mysterious set of stairs that snaked into a typical three story row house.  As my tiny classmates and I reached the top floor we were cheerfully overwhelmed by the reddish radiance of a tiny Buddhist temple.  Visual dazzling as the bronze sheen of the Bodhisattva was, it was overpowered by the redolent waves of incense that smoldered throughout the room.  The scent struck me as deeply exotic and in stark contrast to the plain vanilla wafts that came and went in my sheltered life on the Peninsula.  Later (it must have been mid-day?) we found ourselves in a brightly lit dining hall, mesmerized by the steam carts pushed briskly by waiters who were so rude that you had to kind of love them a bit.  Again, my nezzle was astounded with the intense scents of soy sauce, bao zu, vinegar and garlic.  It likely helped that the wafting smells of the steam cards meshed with three quarters of a century of cigarette ash that had come and gone over the years.

Looking back on Ms. Greiner’s third grade field trip, it was a seminal moment in what would become my lifelong fascination with cities.  The urban existence has always drawn me in for reasons unexplained, and until recently unexplored.  

The very first city on planet Earth is called Uruk, and it lies on the wind-swept plains of South Central Iraq just south of the placid and pristine Lake Hammar.  Founded circa 4,000 BCE, its claim as the initial true “city” may sit sour with historians who favor the ancient wells of Jericho in Israel or the obsidian lined fields of Çatalhöyük in Turkey.   Despite their lore, these two contenders lack the pure criteria for what defines a city:

• Massive Population: By 3,200 BCE, Uruk had an estimated population of 40,000 to 80,000 people, making it the largest urban center in the world at the time.
• The Implementation of Writing: Some of the earliest forms of Cuneiform emerged here, primarily as an administrative tool to track trade, taxes, and temple inventories.
• Social Stratification: Unlike earlier egalitarian villages, Uruk had a clear hierarchy: a ruling priest-king, a bureaucracy of scribes, specialized artisans, and a labor class.
• Monumental Architecture: The city featured massive stone and mud-brick temples, such as the White Temple Ziggurat and the Eanna District, which required centralized planning and a massive workforce to build.
• Economic Specialization: Residents were no longer just farmers; many were full-time potters, weavers, or metalworkers supported by agricultural surpluses from the surrounding countryside.

These criteria were developed by V. Gordon Childe.  Born in Sydney and schooled at Oxford, Childe helped to transform the hobby of sifting through rubble into the modern day scientific discipline of archeology.  He believed that the stories of the stones could help inform us about the incentives and social structures of our ancestors.   Over his lifetime he moved from being a reserved and curious academic to an angst-ridden Marxist (as opposed to the happy kind?). As such, Childe used historical materialism to explain why societies changed.  The aforementioned criteria he developed would become the pillars of his theory of Urban Revolution.  The gist of it is that once you have those five requirements all squared away people will drop their hunter/gatherer habits and move into the Upper West Side of Uruk and the like. 

Fast forward from Uruk to the present moment, and there are 6.6 billion humans (81% of the global population) living in roughly 48,000 cities.  Some are mega cities with over 10 million people, like Chengdu, Jakarta, Lagos and Osaka.  Beyond that you have “major cities” with one million+ inhabitants, “cities” with 50,000+ denizens and “towns” with 5,000+ people. 

The two greatest cities in the world are Tokyo and New York City.  I expect that such a divisive declaration will yield a 50% unsubscribe pattern to this blog, leaving me with just my folks as the readers henceforth. If you are open minded enough, however, to hear my out I can assure that my opinion is solid rock as my wife likes to say. 

The hypothesis about New York and Tokyo is born from quasi-painstaking research of two sorts .  The first is that subject matter experts with deeper coffers and greater intellect than I have come to this same conclusion.  Both Jay-Z and Alexander Hamilton have quipped and crooned that New York is the “greatest city in the world”.  How can they be wrong? And Instagram user KoolGyrl’2005 quips, “There is Tokyo, and then there is everything else.”  KoolGyrl’2005 does NOT, of course, issue praise lightly. 

Then there is my own direct experience which indicates a kind of mutual admiration club.  Each year during the typically frigid second week of January this is confirmed by hosting a group of clients and colleagues from Tokyo for trip to New York City.  We gather their along with 50,000 other close friends for a large business conference in the Henry J. Javits Center.  The trade show itself serves as a kind of backdrop to the close bonding between sales executives and prospects that has been part and parcel to Japanese commercial practice for centuries.

Each day is a curated litany of Gotham’s many wonders, with food taking center stage.  I go through great pains to ensure that the run of show features cuisine that cannot be found in Japan, and the audience seem to (literally) gobble it up.  What I delight in most is discovering what they particularly enjoy about an experience.  For example, each year we kick things off with a big steak dinner at Smith & Wollensky’s on Third Avenue. Fans of Gallaghers and Sparks may take umbrage with this choice, however they should know that the S&W events team is a pleasure to work with, and the author has been a patron of their original location for more than four decades).  As you might guess, the Japanese guests of honor fawn over the portion size of the New York strips, but this year the crab cake starter stole the show.  Who knew you could make kani into a cake???

We go very deep on bagels.  At Ess-a-Bagel on 32nd my guests take great pleasure in going to the bulk bagel queue to chit chat with the Ecuadorean bagelmen (and women).  They leave with half a dozen bagels (five seedy and one salt mixed in), a box of blace and whites and a babka to take home to the family.  I make sure to provide Ziplocks to ensure the bagels make it the freezers of Setagaya and Meguro.  Russ & Daughters new branch on 34th features a sandwich called the Daughters Delight, featuring your choice of schmeer with Gaspe Bay Nova and topped with ikura.  Ikura on a bagel? Sugokunai! Does Russ & Daughters – san read the mind of we Japanese?   And the cream cheese!  So fresh deshou!!!

For pastrami, we make a pilgrimage to Katz’s on lower east side.  I had the paper ticket to the ring leader of our guests, instructing him to keep it until the end.  We then all line up in front of Cutter #6 who gifts Team Tokyo a taste of the goods on wax paper while he assembles 10 half pastrami on rye with mustard along with matzo ball soup and the usual compliment of half dills.  The scene is endemic of the gorgeous multicultural vibe that only New York delivers.  Cool kids with cool hair cuts and cool sneakers silently enjoying heaping platters of corned beef.  Cheery faced alta cokers in ancient Alden cordovan LHS 8’s wiping mustard from their scarves.  It is strange, the idea of celery as a soda dakedou, it’s nice nice yo! 

Along the way, we side track to enjoy Italian amaretti cookies by the pound, Sabrat kosher hotdogs, beloved pizza slices and, of course, bad coffee served by nice people in iconic blue Anthora cups.  We wend our way up to the cheap seats of Madison Square Garden to take in Rangers and Knickerbockers games.  And we end the week together at a non-descript 4.5 bistro before our sayonara party at Birdland. Sitting in the storied jazz club, there is a sweet mix of affection within our group marked by the clink of glasses, gentle smiles and kindly bows.  It is the Great Seal of Japanese Appreciation bestowed upon the time in Manhattan, and it warms my heart.

A quarter a century ago, after I got my wish to move from New York to Tokyo, I spent the time on the plane ride reflecting on the words of my great mentor from Sony Music, Mark Ghuneim.  Mark had been an A&R man, living a nocturnal existence in the clubs and bars of the city before making the savvy pivot to digital rights distribution.   I once asked him why I felt so at home in both great cities.

“That’s easy to answer, Adam,” he noted.  “Tokyo is so similar to New York.  The energy.  The people.  The style.  The food.  Tokyo is exactly the same as New York, but inside out.”

So true.