i meant to post this a long time ago...
... nearly two months to be precise:
Hazy sunlight skims the massive sheets of glass that armour the buildings. The sky is the colour of half-cooked egg white, opaque and wispy. The hazy sunlight is diffusing through canary-yellow trees and skimming the massive sheets of glass that armour the buildings. The landscape looks like Corbusier’s hideous plan for Paris; dozens of intimidating skyscrapers, looping highways and precious little sidewalk. There’s an awkward juxtaposition between the glittering, confident sheen of the modern skyscrapers, with ambitious structures and spacious atriums- and the scummy, rusting factories by the water side, decades of dirt cladding their walls. All of them dwarf the humans that scuttle around them on foot, or weave through on slow wheels.
The thought of December terrified me; all I could think of was cold, cold, cold; blue fingers and a neck knotted up by chill, clouds of white breath and condensation in the mornings. Yet for some reason, it hasn’t been all that bad; a day of drizzle, one of heavy rain, and admittedly air too icy to smoke in- though I do- and a craving for soup. Lunchtimes still allow me to discover new thrills; one day I loop around the palace, staring at the swans helplessly drifting on the hypnotic currents; the absurdly large forested hills rising up like sleeping whales in the center of the premium real estate area; the panting runners in shimmering nylon tracksuits; and the school kids, inexplicably wearing four layers of clothing on their upper half and school-issue hot-pants on their lower. The colours seem more intense in Tokyo than elsewhere: is it just because they’re accentuated by the monotonous, ceaseless grey background they lie against? A pink tree seems like some wild flamingo, the yellow flash of construction workers like electric cochineal. I am agape and giddy at all this quaint beauty.
Two days ago I read an article that suggested Japan was like 1950s America; then today I read that its streets are medieval- “haphazard agglutinations of habit and custom,”. It’s both of these and more; it’s the 1920s, it’s black and white photographs brought back to life, it’s the Meiji era and its awkward jumble of East and West. Uniforms rule the streets; even when splashing their galoshes in the saline puddles of guts and scales in the fish market, the workers’ neat white hats stay cocked, as permanent a feature on their face as the cigarette on their lips.
Hazy sunlight skims the massive sheets of glass that armour the buildings. The sky is the colour of half-cooked egg white, opaque and wispy. The hazy sunlight is diffusing through canary-yellow trees and skimming the massive sheets of glass that armour the buildings. The landscape looks like Corbusier’s hideous plan for Paris; dozens of intimidating skyscrapers, looping highways and precious little sidewalk. There’s an awkward juxtaposition between the glittering, confident sheen of the modern skyscrapers, with ambitious structures and spacious atriums- and the scummy, rusting factories by the water side, decades of dirt cladding their walls. All of them dwarf the humans that scuttle around them on foot, or weave through on slow wheels.
The thought of December terrified me; all I could think of was cold, cold, cold; blue fingers and a neck knotted up by chill, clouds of white breath and condensation in the mornings. Yet for some reason, it hasn’t been all that bad; a day of drizzle, one of heavy rain, and admittedly air too icy to smoke in- though I do- and a craving for soup. Lunchtimes still allow me to discover new thrills; one day I loop around the palace, staring at the swans helplessly drifting on the hypnotic currents; the absurdly large forested hills rising up like sleeping whales in the center of the premium real estate area; the panting runners in shimmering nylon tracksuits; and the school kids, inexplicably wearing four layers of clothing on their upper half and school-issue hot-pants on their lower. The colours seem more intense in Tokyo than elsewhere: is it just because they’re accentuated by the monotonous, ceaseless grey background they lie against? A pink tree seems like some wild flamingo, the yellow flash of construction workers like electric cochineal. I am agape and giddy at all this quaint beauty.
Two days ago I read an article that suggested Japan was like 1950s America; then today I read that its streets are medieval- “haphazard agglutinations of habit and custom,”. It’s both of these and more; it’s the 1920s, it’s black and white photographs brought back to life, it’s the Meiji era and its awkward jumble of East and West. Uniforms rule the streets; even when splashing their galoshes in the saline puddles of guts and scales in the fish market, the workers’ neat white hats stay cocked, as permanent a feature on their face as the cigarette on their lips.