Saturday night I went for a wander around, seeing as I’d not been out in the evenings too much (well, I went to Roppongi a couple of weeks ago, but thats just a little outpost of the west with a funny character set). Harajuku itself seemed pretty quiet, given its liveliness during the day, so I went on to Aoyama. But that wasn’t any livelier, there were a few obviously merry people about but it was hardly the beer and brawl you’d get if you went wandering around Camden on saturday. The pubs didn’t have music on the outside (though I guess there was some inside), there weren’t drunk people shouting at each other and randomly diverting across the street infront of taxis and most of all I didn’t feel like an odd one out in the way I do being sober surrounded by a highstreet full of drunk people at kicking out time.
Time to head home and I take a wrong turn and end up down by the rugby stadium, where a game appears to be finishing off, or rather, it finished some time ago and the dregs are now on their way out. Very politely, being ushered out by policemen. So I’m walking down the road behind the stadium trying to get my barings, theres a squalid looking block of flats and some wasteland on one side and the underside of the terraces on the other. In England I wouldn’t feel safe there during the daytime with a bunch of people – here, I’m on alert, but I suspect theres no need… I do see one tramp as I head down across the park, under the freeway and railway line, up through the shortcut round the back of the station. But thats it, just the one, and he was too wrapped up in his own little world to even really notice there was a road there, let alone me. I got back here about 1130pm and reflect on that journey…the park contained isolated toilets with functional lights, the squalid flats actually weren’t squalid, the bars on the windows were to stop children falling out not to stop people getting in (there were a number of recent model cars parked outside).
As if that wasn’t enough of ‘scary things I wouldn’t consider doing back home’, I went to the port area yesterday, partly to find my way around ‘cos I need to get to the Immigration Bureau, and partly because theres some serious industry down there and I wanted to check out the view of it. This is Vice City from the ground, they musta been thinking about this place (or, I guess one thousand others like it) when they coded it. But its more than that, I was walking along by one of the customs check areas facing back toward Rainbow Bridge – theres this wonderful huge Mitsubishi cement works inland and the customs guys coastside. I’m just about to get my camera out to take some pictures when I spot an odd meeting going on at the dead end of the road…hmmm, maybe its as well to just wander around and look lost, rather than look too much like I’m there to do photographing. So I wander up to the end admiring the bridge, just as I’m passing this SUV with blacked out windows this guy, sitting in the boot, starts playing beautiful saxaphone. What a strange way to relax, but then I can’t really talk seeing as that was what I was doing there too. Either they weren’t Yaks or they put off business until the stupid nosey white guy went away…I will never know.
evilmattikinz tells me there was an earthquake…but I didn’t notice, so it can’t have been a very good one. Or well, next time.
Oh, anyone got any recommendations for .3pg player?
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