Southbound on the Meiji-dori. Sadly my local area, around Harajuku, is one of the more photogenic parts of the road. No matter, the walk must go on.
LaForet today had some gothic lolita dolls in see through plastic coffins hanging morbidly from its tree alongside their christmas decorations. A part of the tree-house project proclaims a chalkboard at the foot of the tree.
Past Shibuya the road runs parallel to a river, its ugliness hidden away behind the offices, they have little concept of water being beautiful here, its just an annoyance, something that has to be dealt with but they’d rather not have to look at it.
Further down the road I discovered where all the abandoned furniture, broken airconditioners and economically unviable motorbikes go, the river eventually pops out from its hiding and runs alongside the road, the two are joined at this point by one of the main Tokyo expressways, this is one of those infrastructural areas. The river and Meiji-dori are seperated by a narrow shrub bed about a yard deep, which contains some of the most ingenious dumping I’ve ever seen – it must have taken several people to get a sofa there, mostly hidden amongst the bushes.
Walking along underneath the expressway you get to see how it is all held together – our bridges in the UK have little expansion gaps to allow for heat differentials. Here they seem to have huge lever systems to cushion the movements of earthquakes in all directions. Quite a feat of engineering.
There is a little seating area overlooking the concrete channel containing the river, there didn’t seem to be any reason for its existence, there was no view, the channel was no less ugly there than anywhere else, but someone had gone to the effort of building an elaborate ramped passageway down to a small seating area.
Finally, the end of the road, I’ve made it. This is where the tramps live, by looks of thingst. And the pigeons. In some ways the junction was a disappointment – there was nothing there but junction. But what was I expecting?
Next was a choice, Gotanda and Shinagawa one way or somewhere I’d never heard of the other. A quick walk took me to Azabu-juban, a small shopping area dominated by further infrastructure, the meeting point of three expressways.
Ducking off down one of the smaller shopping streets leading from the main interchange I saw a precession of hatted people in the distance. While I was looping around one way, they must have looped the other as we met in a small square where they had stopped for photographs. One of the girls bounds over to me and, giving me a sheet explaining all the hats, invites me to join the hatshow. On display were such wonders as the “Scarey tree hat”, the “Flower Pilot hat” and the “Bamboo helicopter hat”.
I have mixed feelings on hats, I think they can look really good on other people, and todays parade looked particularly good, but I’ve never been particularly happy about wearing them myself. They also give the opportunity for some of the most grievous crimes of fashion in recent history – the worst I think I’ve seen here was merely topped off with the hat, a girl in yellow patent leather wellingtons (I’m sure they weren’t really wellingtons, but gave that impression), fishnets, blue denim skirt with tassles and a brown leather cowboy hat. I’m no designer, but surely there should be laws about that sort of thing in any civilised country?
Pictures to follow.
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