The longer I stay away from blogging, the less I feel I have to offer. With n new blogs being set up each day, and many having a unique view of the world, one wonders who would be interested to read one's shit. Indeed, I've found myself holding back many times from divulging some personal nugget, worried that it'll either
1) bore the shit out of you; or
2) give you goosebumps
both leading to the same consequence - that you shall never return to this domain again.
But, once in a while, I come by something that has so much to offer, that I can't help but want to share. In this case, this thing is actually a place. And it is for this reason (and also because I am madly tired) that I am going to deviate from my normal method of blogging, ie diarrhoea-style, and cover what I did in this weird and wonderful city as much as I can, for as long as I am interested.
No prizes for guessing where, duh.
Japan is such a land of contradictions, to say the least. How can someplace so conservative in so many ways, be so completely cuckoo in so many others? People bow and smile when they talk to you. But then there is the obasan manning the roadside ramen and tempura stall dictatorially, unceremoniously, lifting her arm in the universal "get lost" fashion when she finds out your companion isn't having a bowl. This is the place you can find the salariman, hentai, and heck, salariman reading hentai on the public rail system.
Speaking of the rail system, it is a labyrinthine tangle of subway, railway, underground, overground, the old and the new that criss-crosses all over in a way that even the station warden posted at a station had to whip out a whopper of a book comparable to a small Yellow Pages guide just to tell me how to get to a station that was merely one stop away from the particular line I was on. One stop.
1) bore the shit out of you; or
2) give you goosebumps
both leading to the same consequence - that you shall never return to this domain again.
But, once in a while, I come by something that has so much to offer, that I can't help but want to share. In this case, this thing is actually a place. And it is for this reason (and also because I am madly tired) that I am going to deviate from my normal method of blogging, ie diarrhoea-style, and cover what I did in this weird and wonderful city as much as I can, for as long as I am interested.
No prizes for guessing where, duh.
Japan is such a land of contradictions, to say the least. How can someplace so conservative in so many ways, be so completely cuckoo in so many others? People bow and smile when they talk to you. But then there is the obasan manning the roadside ramen and tempura stall dictatorially, unceremoniously, lifting her arm in the universal "get lost" fashion when she finds out your companion isn't having a bowl. This is the place you can find the salariman, hentai, and heck, salariman reading hentai on the public rail system.
Speaking of the rail system, it is a labyrinthine tangle of subway, railway, underground, overground, the old and the new that criss-crosses all over in a way that even the station warden posted at a station had to whip out a whopper of a book comparable to a small Yellow Pages guide just to tell me how to get to a station that was merely one stop away from the particular line I was on. One stop.
At 5 a.m., mercifully empty.
And 12 hours later, on another rail line... well, you can see for yourself.
And thus concludes Part 1 of my story.
No comments:
Post a Comment