Trip to Korea and Japan: Day 24 - Nature vs western dualism in Tokyo

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I think I have touched upon earlier on in this trip about the Japanese relation to nature. It would be presumptuous of me to say anything beyond shallow observations, but here are just such reflections.

When walking in Tokyo (or Sapporo, or in Shikoku earlier this year), I have observed how the Japanese treasure greenery in w way that is both passionate but also less constructed somehow. I often see cement and asphalt neighborhoods given life with pots and seemingly semi-wild plants that I am sure is very well tended, that affirms the observations on architecture I have done. As much as city planning seem to be more organic (or one may say, unstructured), how the local or personal space is handled is also more dynamic than in the west. It is not necessarily that they have an higher esthetic or greener cities, but that it all seems somehow more ... natural. Nature and civilization is not just such a dualism as I am used to, here they at least seem to coexist or, to be fair, nature is allowed in a higher degree some "artistic freedom" where it is present.

I cant stop thinking about this in relation to the green movement in Sweden which often has a character of self fulfillment or as seeing nature solely a victim, thereby recreating the historical dualism of man and nature that got us into this place from the start.
I basically atheist, but I can still feel some envy of the general Japanese spirituality in the sense that they still see meanings in their everyday life when we in the west are so materialistic even in our personal development. I would never want a return to the christianity of before, but here in Japan I can long for this connectivity that I can only in the best of situations "learn" to feel in a limited way, as little as you can learn being religious.

The connectivity and somehow unpretentiousness goes both ways. This is XXX Park where the illusion of greenery and temple sanctity is suddenly broken by an apartment complex is allowed to be built very close.

Rugged small apartment houses, but still all this greenery.

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