All Good Things

Since I'm mostly done with all of the Tokyo stuff, and since there were pretty much no opportunities for me to sit down and write a blog during the Kyoto-Osaka trip, I'm going to tie up the blog at large now, do the Kyoto-Osaka trip when I get home, and then make a few appendix entries for some subjects that have aroused my interest during this trip.

Basically, then, this is goodbye. I'm sitting alone in the Hodecrib at the moment, watching the laundry on the balcony billow in the breeze. Behind it, towers like broken teeth rise from the cityscape, blinking their red and blue, the town humming along under their watchful gaze. During my time here, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe; attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glittering in the dusk near Tannhauser Gate... err, sorry, wrong movie.

Can't say I blame me, though. Cases in point:








































This is an absolute marvel of a city. The technological convenience, the endless array of novelties, the number of people, the combination of linear efficiency and balls-out chaos, the sheer lunacy of this place. Just now as I write this, an ambulance is speeding through the Shinagawa dusk, sirens blaring, shouting a terse and continuous stream of warnings out of a loudspeaker on its roof. At the same time, somewhere else, a policeman is riding his bicycle, ringing his bell at pedestrians who don't see him coming. Vending machines whirr away, selling neck ties and AA batteries. Somewhere down there, in the fading twilight, the Shibuya potato man serenades a lonely street corner.

I am coming back one day. And when I do, I'm staying back.

A small montage for memory: the good, the great and the funny.













































To all the beautiful people I've been lucky enough to meet on this strange and fantastic journey - Mark, Wayne, Rei, Kenny, Sina, Lorne, Shu, Neil, Chris, Reffik, Brian - I give much love and respect. I'll see you again some day.


Good night, Tokyo.