shorthand version of what reality actually consists of.
Thus, while walking Tokyo at its misguidingly lackadaisical pace, the Shibuyanjukuppongi-ish
pictures seen on the internet and on Lonely planets impose their sensorial grids on reality,
making the occasional visitor forcibly deaf and blind to the actual flow of the city's life.
It's kids singing to themselves on their way to school, teenagers absorbed in their books
sleepwalking off the train, cans of whisky and soda leisurely drunk at 9am on a workday,
construction workers, shoeless, sprawled on the ground during lunchbreak.
Real estate agents sitting on emptly plot of lands on Sundays, for hours on end, with a foldable
picnic chair and a mobile phone as sole companions. Elderly persons on wheelchairs lovely
lifted onto vans, leaving home headed to senior-daycare centers, their middle-aged sons
waving goodbye beyond the windshield.
The spiritual bargaining taking place in late night Shinto shrines, expressed through the bows, handclaps and recollection of lonely devouts. Bicycle brakes screeching painfully on sidewalks,
the two riders acknowledging the near-crash staring at each other, in mute and expressionless Japanese contempt.
And the small groups of Vietnamese students loudly hanging out in parks, the busloads of
Chinese tourists powershopping their way through Ginza. The tattoed flocks of young
caucasians and the confused herds of older ones, the Thai girls in kimono
and the Malay in hijab.
Rows of bicycles toppled over by the wind, myriads of umbrellas forgotten by the time rain lifts.
The 5pm chimes and the cicadas in the summer, the sweet potato truck's song and
the cawing of crows.
Unnoticed as they may be they make the city what it is.
And this city is the very place where i want to be.
making the occasional visitor forcibly deaf and blind to the actual flow of the city's life.
It's kids singing to themselves on their way to school, teenagers absorbed in their books
sleepwalking off the train, cans of whisky and soda leisurely drunk at 9am on a workday,
construction workers, shoeless, sprawled on the ground during lunchbreak.
Real estate agents sitting on emptly plot of lands on Sundays, for hours on end, with a foldable
picnic chair and a mobile phone as sole companions. Elderly persons on wheelchairs lovely
lifted onto vans, leaving home headed to senior-daycare centers, their middle-aged sons
waving goodbye beyond the windshield.
The spiritual bargaining taking place in late night Shinto shrines, expressed through the bows, handclaps and recollection of lonely devouts. Bicycle brakes screeching painfully on sidewalks,
the two riders acknowledging the near-crash staring at each other, in mute and expressionless Japanese contempt.
And the small groups of Vietnamese students loudly hanging out in parks, the busloads of
Chinese tourists powershopping their way through Ginza. The tattoed flocks of young
caucasians and the confused herds of older ones, the Thai girls in kimono
and the Malay in hijab.
Rows of bicycles toppled over by the wind, myriads of umbrellas forgotten by the time rain lifts.
The 5pm chimes and the cicadas in the summer, the sweet potato truck's song and
the cawing of crows.
Unnoticed as they may be they make the city what it is.
And this city is the very place where i want to be.
