Scent and the City

I have always been affected by smells. They are my main memory-activator, which unfortunately means certain fragrances remind me of ex-boyfriends who should have remained curled up and locked in a dumpster. Tokyo is a place where every sense gets a firing on a daily basis, particularly that of smell. Here are some of the scents I will most miss when I leave (and a few I won't);

Olfactory paradise:
1. Incense wafting in from neighbourhood shrines and temples;
2. Fresh, un-steeped Matcha (tea-ceremony tea) in the Seibu Basement;
3. Yakitori grilling from sidewalk restaurants and yatai;
4. The acrid smoke smell of extinguished firecrackers; and
5. Our tatami room. Like fresh bales of hay during a thunderstorm.

Olfactory purgatory:
1. Sewage smell hovering over street grills. I swear to God it's the worse I've smelt, and I've smelt some shit in my time;
2. Human urine in some train stations (somehow "public draining of lizard" got missed in the Japanese list of human transgressions);
3. Fish stalls. Sure, it's fresh fish (most of the time) but in spite of being raised by a fanatical fisherman, I still can't stomach the smell of uncooked fish;
4. Oyaji Rot; and
5. Cigarettes, both "fossilised" (many buildings have that deliciously stale 50-years-of-cigarettes-stubbed-out-in-the-carpet aroma) and "fresh" (particularly bad is the smoking section on Shinjuku's Saikyo line platform. The cigarette smoke there could smother a rodent at 20 feet).