Jaden’s Tokyo

Jaden Smith’s been obsessed with Tokyo ever since he made Neo Yokio, and it hasn’t gotten any less strange. The anime was pretty bad, but he doesn’t seem bothered. He was too busy loving Tokyo to notice it didn’t work.

In an interview he basically declared Tokyo the best place on Earth. ’Please, really, go to Tokyo and have fun because it’s just incredibly great,’ he said. No irony, no hedging. He meant it. And because he’s Jaden, he flew out to Harajuku with his crew and filmed himself throwing Monopoly money around—just fake cash floating everywhere like he was documenting some vision only he could see.

There’s something unhinged about it, the way he loves the city without any self-consciousness. No performative cool, no brand strategy, just pure devotion. He’s built his own Tokyo in his head and he keeps going back to it.

Whether that’s beautiful or ridiculous mostly depends on how you feel about people who care that much about anything, real or imagined.