Podtext demo

Now you can look at what Walkin' in Tokyo walk guide Podtext looks like before you download it from this page. Here is an html version to play with, thanks to the great application VoodooPad. Simple isn't it? Minimalist? Yes indeed. You can bet the next step will be an extended Notes version for iPod that allows to link to pictures, snippets of video, and recreate what multimedia was all about 10 years ago when delivered over CD-ROM.

Night walk from Hotel Grand Palace

A pleasant night walk to stretch the legs for 30 minutes or more according to your pace. It starts from Hotel Grand Palace near Kudanshita crossing in Tokyo. The same walk applies from Hotel Metropolitan Edmont as well.

From Hotel Grand Palace, turn immediately right and walk along the avenue until you reach the Kudanshita large crossing. Turn right again and climb the avenue toward the Yasukuni shrine whose monumental tôrii - portal - should be illuminated. I never walked there too late and check at what time they cut the projectors. You can safely walk along the large alley inside until you bump into a transversal lane. You can see and go up to the shrine gates that are close on the opposite side if you wish and peek inside.

From that transversal lane, turn right, walk along and cross the street to enter a no-car small lane a little bit on your right that goes along quiet at this time schools. The path is winding a little but you basically go straight after the crossing - don't turn right along the steep slope. This residential area is very relaxing with very few cars to mare the silence.

You will walk until you bump into a wall and have no choice but to go right or left. Go left. You may see a policeman in faction there but don't worry. He is not waiting for you. After you turned left and walked for a few meters along a massive stone wall on your left side, turn right at the transversal slope and go down then opposite the street at the end where you will find a few steps to prop up you on this part of the Sotobori green lane. The view is quite nice from there. Turn right when you reach the lane and follow it until the end which is less than 200 meters. You leave the lane but go further on the same direction.

You will see on your left the nice Ushigome bridge that lays above the Sotobori outer moat and the Japan Railways track down under with the Iidbashi station building which is also a nice rare piece of countryside like architecture. The view from the bridge is rewarding. On the opposite side is the Canal Cafe which offers a nice view. The food and drinks are a no comment though so if you decide to relax there, a coffee shall be enough.

We go further round the circle by leaving the bridge from where we treated on it, walk straight until the first crossing, turn left then walk the same lane until we reach the large avenue where the hotel is located. Before that, you will see on the slope the Tokyo Daijinja shrine maybe lighted up but probably close. If you are staying in the Hotel Metropolitan Edmont, turn at the AM/PM convenience store further down the slope on your left and walk down a little bit before you see the hotel tucked in behind the avenue. For Hotel Grand Palace, do not turn but just go straight down the slope, then right along the avenue.

A relaxing walk.

Walking in Tokyo with iPod

I have uploaded the first Walkin' in Tokyo Project Walk Guide to display on an iPod with Notes function. This document you can download here contains right now only two walk courses indications. The walk starts from Hotel Grand Palace near Kudanshita. If you are staying or living in the area - including Hotel Metropolitan Edmont - and you are an iPod user, I would be delighted if you test the courses that are really nice and send me feedback on the usability of this tiny trial. Also coming with this iPod document is a hand drawn map for the first walk that goes up to the Hotel New Otani via Yasukuni shrine and Sotobori outer moat green walking trail. I will create and add maps for further walks when time allows. Again, feedback is very welcome as usual.

The discipline of Walkin' in Tokyo

Walking slowing looking after the details is way much more difficult than walking at fast pace to try and not be late at an appointment. I used a watch until last birthday that was naturally ahead of time by 10 minutes, whatever efforts put into stopping it from rushing onward. It was the perfect watch for not being late. Now my new watch is pegged twice a day on the Japanese atomic clock by waves. Time management is an issue. But not when walking on flânerie mode, not when walking the Walkin' in Tokyo fashion way. Although other fast paces activities are inhibiting the project Walkin' in Tokyo to expand, thinking about it, and especially talking about it around me has been thriving lately. Some peopIe are kind and reconforting enough to tell me it is a good idea. It may be.

I take the risk of sounding pedantic and overly intellectual about the mere activity of urban flânerie, but I take that risk anyway. Urban walking as a discipline comes with two purposes: awareness of trying and see, incorporate the outside, the street, as nothing but an extension of one's home: me being here, here and now, and this here being not simply a space of transition between two safer places - home and workplace, but an extension of both where static and movement alternate. Static in the café, or on the terasse (a rare spot in Tokyo), moving along the street, not for window shopping but for trying and acquire everything that make the street being what it is at that moment, acquisition by watching. An activity with no end because embracing everything is impossible and the street is not a still picture. This conscious tentative of incorporation the outside as an extension of the inside has always been the typical purpose of the flâneurs of the 20th century strolling on the boulevards or along the roofed passageways not far from the Opera.

Slow walking is a discipline as well as watching on purpose is another one. Practice the two together and you get overwhelmed. The mind with its unrelenting urge to fill the slowed space with its own never ending inner talking rushes on the front stage of awareness. Taming the inner voice is a challenge. I once laughed reading about the correlation between bicycling and meditation. I don't laugh anymore, especially after having spent more than a year commuting by bicycle in full specialized gear. It is a discipline, just like flânerie with the will to consciously feel the outside as being part of the inner side. Walkin' in Tokyo project is as much about walking along nice trails in Tokyo to see nice spots, as to make these spots along the trail part of your inner experience, even when you are no longer physically here. But from that disciplined approach comes an interesting but not new understanding that when on a slow pace walking and watching intently, lots of tiny things pop up where one is usually blind when rushing around.

On the picture in this post is an owl decorated lightning rod in the background on top of the Athéné Français French language school on the Ochanomizu hill.