Casting off moorings

At the Takeshiba ship terminal. A good opportunity to remind oneself that Tokyo is a seaside city.

The milky blurred like light is for real. I quit the idea to use a filter and fake with a blue sky and emerald sea. It is funny how both a departing ship, just like a construction work site kind of mesmerize spectators, that is, male onlookers. On the landing stage and the nice walking lane made out of plank wood, office workers from the offices neaby, and a few jobless people too, are transfixed by the ship leaving the quay for a travel that may probably be shorter than imagination wants to fancy. The only woman, a young one, I saw was sitting on a bench, her shoes off, transfixed by the screen of her mobile and totally oblivious of the panoramic sight, not a beautiful sight, but a sight that allows the eyes to look very far away. Something that seldom happens for city dwellers. Filtered by the glass panes of a coffee shop close by the Intercontinental Hotel, the view takes an exotic <en>asian</en> slant. Is this the result of such long years spent here? But Japan, or at least Tokyo only very but seldom looks Asian. Talk about instead of the Hong Kong bay!







Some times later, in a huge meeting room at a client's office with a view on the same panorama, I idly listen to a presentation with an eye fixed in the distant bay bridge over which the planes getting ready to land at Haneda airport turn around. The urge to cast off the moorings is deliciously titillating .

From Ostend to Hongo

This Sunday morning, a totally improvised stroll that starts with a view of a refuse barge 10 minutes away from the house that reminds me of Ostend. I have never been in Ostend though. In order to avoid the eyes sore that is the Kôrakuen district with its attraction park and stadium where I will have to go anyway to buy shirts, I decide to head to that beautiful red house in the middle of the steep Ochanomizu slope and have a slow, serious look around. That is where I will start drifting away and almost get lost - with such relish! - in the small back streets on the Hongo district. After what I ended up buying those shirt. You can see a series of pictures here with the comments - oh la, la! Quelle horreur! - in French only for the time being.


Note: I am no good because not confident at taking pictures of people I don't know. But during the hour I spent drifting in the Hongo district backyard, I may have met no more than five people maybe. Kids almost do not play in the streets. or maybe they are busy watching TV or having club activities at school at that time. As for grown-ups, well, they don't live outside the house. The small private garden are decorative and not spaces to enjoy living in the outside. There is an absolute separation between the public and the private space. The private space is mostly indoor. One issue is that in such village like crooked and clustered areas, people tend to observe each other very closely. It must be more fun in the end that watching the TV. But especially for people renting apartments, this quickly turn to be a major source of stress. But for someone living now in a 25 stories building in Tokyo, this Hongo area that is located a mere 30 minutes away from home is a pleasure to visit.

Aoyama cemetery

Thanks to the rain somewhat receding, I could further my exploration of that tip of the Aoyama cemetery, and walk through the whole distance of that beautiful green tunnel like brick road that crosses through that vast city of the dead. The Aoyama cemetery is a gem of a place, with staircases, flat or sloped side lanes that vanish in the distance.
The lush of green expertly left to seemingly grow based on its own blueprint is gorgeous and has a reminiscence of England. The palette of greens and browns is eyes soothing. Rusted fences faintly protect rich and huge tomb stones, some located

After a series of tombs with crosses, i discover the foreigners corner of the cemetery. Foreigners always apart even after death. There is a list of this place dwellers. Many anglo-saxons, some French national who passed away mostly in the 19th century. It's a queer vision

Passage d'Autre Fois

Found the Passage d'Autre Fois, by pure chance and curiosity. Behing the steep Kagurazaka slope, this faked but well, enchanting short crooked alley reminded me at first sight with a well pampered touristic equivalent in a Provencal village, or maybe the old Cannes on the hill looking to the Mediterranean blue. But no, this by all means i s Japan with green moss on fluorescent steroid thanks to the damp of the rainy season and the light saturated grey filter of the sky. Discreet and most probably highly expensive restaurants are clustered here. Further on, a little shabby but much real house has an Italian air, while in the pocket size garden of a tiny dwelling, I find a miniature shrine protecting the people living there.



After dusk, I went with U. for a short stroll impromptu stroll. The official objective was to drop by the bookstore at the station for him to have a look at the manga cards on display he has been dreaming about. In exchange for my patience, I suggested a digression before going back home and turn around the steep passages I saw in daylight alone a few hours ago. U. generally loves to stroll with his papa. He even thought the crooked passages to remind him of a video game. Why not. Cultural references are a personal matter. The moss was largely invisible at night but we bumped nose to nose with lots of lazy stray cats.

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Picturing the rain

The Lotus shoot tea at the TeTes restaurant located on the Nishi-Azabu crossroad was golden, delicate, soothing and lightened up the gray Tokyo sky. A little bit costly this TeTes restaurant, but with a large room and a huge vista to the street that makes the noisy outside almost enjoyable from the inside. After a Vietnamese Thai mixed pretty good lunch, I started walking toward the Aoyama cemetery for the purpose to grasp the overall topography of the place. The rain would bare me to go further into discovery.

Close by a funeral house and a ludicrous trendy café, I found a kind of dead angle safe of urban planning, with a beautiful tunnel like straight road that goes right into the cemetery and seems to vanish in the distance. There is a beautiful old house selling flowers but strangely closed at that time of the day.

I had fancied to take the rain in picture. What a subject for photography! Not banalities like puddles of rain mirroring the dull sky, or drenched people walking despite them carrying umbrella. The urban walker should not shun at walking in the rain, a delicious experience granted one has a large enough umbrella - which I don't - and do not fuss too much about getting ... well, wet. I had some success turning into digital pixels the trajectory of rain drops caught by my shabby cheap camera. Mission accomplished.

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Taking the time to watch

L. had suggested that I go to the back of the insufferable Roppongi avenue with it suspended urban highway, walk past the Lawson convenience store to find in the backstreets of Nishi-Azabu a cluster of good restaurant. I did go up the convenience store but was sucked in by a mysterious alley plastered with luscious plants and trees all over the place and a right angle at the end of it that was certainly hiding some nice surprised. Indeed, at a stone throw distance of the highway, this was the countryside with tiny or sumptuous, and for ridiculously pretentious rich houses. My red Mercedes was waiting for me but my chauffeur being on vacation, I decided to walk further, ending up again in that dreaded avenue.


A week ago, riding a taxi with customers, I took a mental note of that billboard that had a fantastic air under an electric sky before a rain storm. I wanted to go back to the place and look at it at leisure. This is now done. The fair sky has wiped away quite a lot of the mystery but the place has an uncanny charm I decided to try and figure out the reasons why. And I found it. Here are two avenues that spread apart on a 25 to 30 degrees angle to run separately around the huge Aoyama cemetery. The very angle, on the tip of which stands an elegant beige brick building slightly rounded is a rare sight in this city. In fact, despite the monster highway running in the back of the picture, the so called Nishi-Azabu crossroad is way much sleek and visually satisfying than the more sought after Roppongi crossroad a little farther away. Of course, you don't go to Roppongi to enjoy the topography.
La topographie des lieux - un carrefour à 25 degrés avec à sa pointe un immeuble courbe couleur de briques beiges - une perspective pas trop bouchée vers le ciel, des immeubles ecclectiques mais sobres, un vaste restaurant façon chinois aux murs terre de Sienne, bref, des couleurs, des textures et des formes qui participe à un coktail urbain agréable.

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Tsukiji Baby

The other morning, walking to meet a customer at the Westin Hotel in Ebisu district, I passed close by that famous little deluxe restaurant palace. It had been a long time I had not seen that incongruous piece of aristocratic mansion that was supposedly brought piece by piece to Japan. It may not be true. Our friend M. who is a professional French food lover told us of her mixed experience at that restaurant. The food may be pricey but the sight is free and queer. While reaching the hotel behind, I was wondering why such piece of otherwise inconsequent but typical 19th century European rich dwelling looks so outwardly here. Is it the disneyland like nature of it, that is, the fake character oozing all around? It for sure does not belong to the whole modern Ebisu environment that is nothing less or more than a shopping mall. Space unity is a subjective value maybe, an esthetics opinion acquired and nurtured through the environment where one was raised. This melange des genres could indeed hardly happen in Paris.

In the afternoon, somewhat rushing out of a meeting not far from the Tsukiji market area, I noticed an incredibly more-japanese-than-that-you-die view, that is the row of restaurants and shops that make up one side of the market perimeter. The discovery was the result of an unplanned change of perspective where I simply started to walk on the opposite side of the street, to discover that I had never indeed observed that place from this new vista. A mere simple shift of perspective and a new world emerges.

Was it prior to this? Yes. I sort of bumped into this baby held by a lady I want to think of as his grand-mother. I looked at him, he looked back, we looked at each other, you are looking at him, and he is looking at you. Cute, n'est-ce pas?

Akikawa

(Click here to see the panoramic picture)

Tokyo green. Take the Chuo-sen, the central JR line, and go West. One hour and a few more minutes away, it is still Tokyo, that is administratively, but Tokyo in the countryside. The Akikawa river is dotted by a few vegetables fields and rice paddies. Not far from there, growing vegetables is an intensive activity. For family reasons, we often get there and spend week-ends to resource in greensight. Just about a month ago, the landscape was a desultory yellowish thing with dried out bushes and shabby trees. This is all over. Thanks to Spring and welcome to Summer.


K.'s junior school is still located here in the middle of the fields, just like 30 years ago. On Sundays, boys, as in many Japanese schools, gather to play baseball. Baseball seems to be more of a voice than a muscle activity. The kids encourage each other in not much enthusiastic ritualistic way. It is the coach's voice scolding and shaming that is stands a head and shoulder above the chorus. My sports coach disgust knows no limit. (Click here to walk around in the picture.)



At this time of the year, irrigation channels are gushing with water swarming the paddies. It adorns our usual walk path with refreshing googling notes. Rice shots are brought from elsewhere and plucked in the mud one by one, by hand. Akikawa rice has no brand image and the paddies are small. The growers may be eating it all.

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