On my first trip to Cuba, I was delighted to find that not only was the city structure intact but that individual edifices could be matched with my memory of the 1959 film "Our Man in Havana."
The same cannot be said of Tokyo, a city where the time traveler looks in vain for material reminders of the past.
This is why film is such an important document, one that is celebrated in "World Film Locations: Tokyo" (edited by Chris MacGee), a celluloid anthology of immense archival value.