Befall Upon The Watchtower

Posted on 14/02/2015 by Luke Kinsella

For whatever reason, someone has suggested to me that I check out the area where the Arakawa River and the Sumida River flow into one. As I head out into what feels like a spring afternoon, I realise that my destination today might offer little excitement to anyone, including myself. Somehow, I feel drawn in the direction of Arakawa, the shackles of free will severed from my legs. Part of me feels like there is a demon possessing my very soul, controlling my destiny as I cycle at rapid speeds in the direction of Arakawa.

I see the remnants of a temple or shrine, but it looks as though perhaps it is trapped within the confines of an industrial site. Not letting that stop me for one moment, I park my bicycle and wander in. Seconds later, I am cornered by a security guard. He shouts angrily in Japanese as he waves his hand in the direction of the street. A strong urge to not give up consumes me, and I quickly find myself on the other side of the complex.

It is a strange sight. I am standing along the Sumida River, and there is nothing but tall yellow grass stretching off in every direction. No cars pass along the road in front of the shrine. No people are walking. It is silent, yet only ten minutes away are the tall residential buildings that make up my neighbourhood. Looming over the Shinto shrine are three huge green balls, presumably part of a sewerage station. Perhaps the god of water treatment resides here.

I carry on my journey, not wanting to disturb the sewer gods, and eventually find a map. Sure enough, the place I had just visited is marked as ‘Sewer Station Shirahige Nishi Pump Place.’ However, there is no mention of any temple or shrine on the map. There is, however, one other interesting point of interest labelled as ‘Ballpark for boy Ground of using combinedly.’ I excuse the terrible English and carry on along the river.

Ten minutes later, my fanciful difficulty fades away, offering me some karmic resolve.

A watchtower. The best thing that has happened to me all week. It somehow feels like I am stumbling through an episode of the television drama ‘Lost’. For no apparent reason, there is a massive wooden watchtower sitting guard at the entrance to one of the bridges that traverses the Sumida River. What is it doing here? Who built it? Is this real? My mind floods with questions and possibilities, as if somehow collecting fragmented pieces of information and forming them into ideas in my head.

I park my bicycle, and ignoring the sign that tells me to stay away, I enter the wooden doorway. My body filled with an emotion that is yet to be given a name. As I climb the watchtower, I begin to wonder if all of this is just some giant metaphor for something else, something that can’t be explained with words. Each step toward the top tests me, as if life is testing me at this very moment. Eventually, as I near the top, the cracks in the surface become wider, making way for sunbeams.

The view from the top is of nothing of note. Tokyo Skytree hangs in the distance, slightly masked by concrete surroundings. In the direction I came from, I can see the water treatment plant and the barren riverbed. I stand at the top of the tower in silence for a while, watching the blue hue of the river for a time, before the sound of footsteps echo from below. A man appears. He looks devious, something very odd about him; like he means to cause trouble. He stands atop the watchtower with me, blissfully staring out into a void. The man doesn’t speak to me, and something about him makes me incredibly uneasy. I decide that I can’t stand here any longer, so I head back down the steps to my bicycle below.

I cross the river as fast as I can, somewhat unnerved. On the other side of the river, I take a right, following its path back toward what looks like civilisation. After twenty minutes of cycling, I realise I am slightly at a loss. I don’t really know where I am, and I’m not sure if the river I crossed was the Arakawa River or the Sumida River. Perhaps I have already cycled beyond the confluence.

I try to check the map on my camera, but nothing appears to work. I stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and take in my surroundings. Desolate. Empty. Nothing. Everything here looks abandoned, and it begins to reflect on me. Right now, even I feel completely abandoned; which is the strangest feeling I have suffered in a while. As I stand here, lost in the middle of something that might or might not be nothingness, a certain fear destroys my usual calm demeanour, and I begin to panic.

Everything will be fine, though. As if saved, I can just make out the silhouette of Tokyo Skytree on the horizon; so I point my bicycle in the direction of the structure. After what seems like an hour of following the river, I reach a bridge and am finally free to cross. This bridge takes me over the Arakawa River, so it appears that I never reached my destination, never found what I sought out to find. Regardless, I am finally back within familiar territory, heading back toward life. I stop to photograph a sign that probably has no relevance here, but perhaps it does. The sign appears to have been written by Yoda from Star Wars.

As the day continues to distract me, I inadvertently end up in Akihabara. Tired from three or four hours of intemperate exploration, I decide to leave my bicycle at the train station. Inside, I stand at the platform, waiting for the train to take me back to Minowa. It is here that I see yet another strange vending machine.

The machine offers four shelves of items, two of which are toys for children: two sets from the Nature in Japan series. Small models of various different animals native to the country. It is what is contained within the other two shelves that I find strange. At a bargain price of ¥200 per purchase, I can buy office ladies that sit on the edge of my coffee cup; legs open, underwear exposed.

Akihabara Station famously has signs at each escalator, warning women to watch out for ‘upskirting.’ Apparently, it is a law in Japan that all cameras must make a sound when a photograph is taken. With Akihabara being the home of electronics and comic books, lonely men have often been known to pry on women as they ride the escalator, sneakily taking photographs from below.

This vending machine perhaps tries to solve that problem. These coffee cup women are clearly exposing their undergarments, with no shame. The only shame is possibly when your co-workers see you with a decorated coffee cup featuring this type of imagery. ‘Make your office fun!’ ‘Happiness in your cup!’ are just some of the explanations on offer, scrawled in Japanese across the machine.

There are certain times in my life when my mind is simply not capable of understanding something, and this is certainly one of them.

The Age of the Gods

Posted on 11/02/2015 by Luke Kinsella

Today is National Foundation Day, the day that Emperor Jimmu was declared the very first Emperor of Japan, 2675 years ago. This marked a transitional period in the country’s history, ending what was known then as the Age of the Gods. It is often believed that before the accession of Emperor Jimmu, Japan was founded in an entirely different way.

It was once widely believed that the universe was engulfed in a chaos of sorts. The sound of particles moving around in a ball of confusion somehow created light. This light sat above the universe for a long time. Eventually, the particles began to fall, creating a blanket of clouds. From the clouds, five gods known collectively by the name Kotoamatsukami appeared from seemingly nowhere.

The five gods decided to cast four single droplets of water onto the oceans that formed on the planet below. Miraculously, these four drops materialised into huge land masses that are recognised today as the four main islands of the archipelago known as Japan.

I take to the Sumida River to look at the sunshine and the clouds and think about the formation of the universe. The story of Japanese creation seems to completely exclude the genesis of all the other landmasses on the planet, but oddly, the theory is still believed today by some Japanese people. With no celebrations at all taking place, I decide to follow the path of the river in a new direction and end up in the area of Hashiba.

Hashiba is somewhat unusual. The first thing that strikes me is that there are no maps, no places of interest, and no tourists. Just plenty of graffiti. It always surprises me to see graffiti in Japan, something I had almost forgotten existed until today. The Hashiba area is connected to the river and was once used as a ferry terminal. A floating bridge existed here too, some time ago. Before that, this area was covered in overgrown fields.

An older Japanese person I met with told me that he remembers coming here as a child to catch dragonflies and play in the long grass. The only sense of nature here now is the piles of dirt mixed with rubble, forgotten about and never removed.

In this area, watching over the mounds of trash and the graffiti, sit election posters for the Komeito Political Party. The party was founded by members of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism and therefore does the unpopular act of mixing both politics with religion. I am not sure anyone is here to help Hashiba, though—a place that seems incredibly run down and feels almost absent of potential change.

I decide to remain positive, to try to discover the good things about the area. Mixed amongst the negativity sits Hogenji Temple—a rather beautiful place with an old well, many stone statues, and a cemetery. For whatever reason, the grounds of the temple are filled with the sound of a loud chainsaw, disturbing the silence and further adding to my gloom-ridden impression of the area.

Desperately trying to find a redeeming factor, I continue to explore. I wander around for a while until I eventually find a sign written in English. The sign is provided by the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, which is usually a good indication that something important might be here. Finally, a point of interest. Finally, something to see.

What looks like another temple turns out to be a tomb. The tomb comes complete with its own nature in the form of beautiful trees and a huge aviary. As if deliberately trying to add to the contrast, the tomb also includes a basketball court.

I discover that this is the final resting place of Ando Toya, a famous Confucian scholar. He was known for his time spent studying the Chinese language and teaching it to the people of Japan. He once said about the Chinese language, “It sounds like the chirping of birds. I can write, but when I open my mouth, I truly cannot speak.” This doesn’t quite explain the need for a basketball court here, but it does perhaps explain the aviary.

I stand in the grounds of Ando Toya’s tomb, staring in silence at the birds for almost a full hour.

The beautiful sparrows chirp in their hundreds. The echoing of those words spoken by Ando Toya flows around my head. It makes me wonder if the birds are secretly trying to communicate with me in Chinese. Maybe they are.

Welcome to the Lunar Industries

Posted on 26/01/2015 by Luke Kinsella

Another intrusive start to the day in Japan. The ground rattles like teeth on an icy morning, the skyscrapers singing a chorus of concrete scraping together, pulled apart in directions against their will. It’s another earthquake, the strongest one I’ve felt so far. Suddenly, everything stops. Just as I begin to drift away, hoping to return to whatever fleeting memory lingers in my dream-filled head, the shaking resumes. This time, it lasts only a few seconds, but it’s enough to shatter whatever it was in my imagination that I desperately sought to remember.

I head outside to grab a can of Boss Coffee before taking a seat on the steps leading up to my front door. A homeless man, who resides in a cardboard castle outside the entrance to my apartment, stirs in his sleep. He coughs and groans before looking around and noticing me, perhaps awakened by the early morning shaking of the earth. The man speaks broken English and asks me the usual stagnant questions. It turns out he was once in a famous rock band, a drummer. Aged sixty-five but looking perhaps twice that, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Without knowing his circumstances, I decide it would be rude to judge him any further. I want to ask him why he keeps sleeping where I would normally park my bicycle, but I think my English words might be lost on him. He tells me something is happening on Sunday in the arcade that runs close to my house. With its worn-out shops and shutters, it might well be the first activity this area has seen for months.

After becoming fully awake, I can’t help but notice that the moon is still up. Although crescent, the moon’s light casts a shadow, revealing the clear roundness of its form, something I have never noticed before. I begin to wonder if I am still dreaming.

I cycle into Asakusa to find the streets littered with Australian tourists. It seems they have chosen to leave behind the glorious summer weather of their home country for the winter of Japan. Today is Australia Day, a celebration of the first British ships landing on Australian shores. I weave my bicycle between drunk people shouting and fighting on the street. I thought it was the English who didn’t know how to behave. Drunk before lunchtime, not even Mr. Sixty-Five-year-old homeless man can achieve that.

I head across the city for some exploring. Despite spending a lot of time in Asakusa, I’m continually surprised to discover new things every day. Today, I visit what was once a beautiful pond, now home to ghostly apparitions.

Ubagaike Pond is now enveloped in what looks like a construction site. The pond is completely dried up; only the old stone outline that makes up its shape remains. Many years ago, an old woman lived in a house close to the pond. She lived with her beautiful young daughter. The mother would send her daughter out into the streets to lure in gentlemen, hoping that they would spend the night in her daughter’s embrace. The unsuspecting gentlemen would join the daughter, and after lovemaking, when the pair were both sound asleep, the old woman would creep into the room. With a huge piece of stone, the mother would bash the man’s skull in before taking all of his possessions. This weapon was known then as a ‘stone pillow.’ One day, the old woman threw herself into the pond, an act that was out of character and has no bearing on the rest of the story. These days, at night, you can hear the quiet sobs of her daughter, or so the legend goes.

Back in the slums of Tokyo, I sit in my house, editing some writing that I have been working on, my mind rinsed clear by the haunting melody of Clint Mansell’s ‘Moon’ soundtrack. The drifting peace only lasts momentarily, though. At 5 p.m., the familiar sound of music penetrates my window. It seems that, despite the winter and occasional snowflake, ice cream is sold all year round in Japan.

“Aisukuriimu, Aisukuriimu, Aisukuriimayoou.” Typically, the song occupies the space in my head usually reserved for contemplation and creative thinking. Every evening in Japan, I sit suffering in silence, with the ice cream song playing over and over in my mind, like a broken merry-go-round.

I leave the house after an hour of silent anger toward frozen milk and cream, and cycle as usual in the direction of Asakusa. For no reason, I decide not to cycle through the red-light district (my usual route) but take a different path. It leads me to the sound of live reggae music and a smattering of distant applause seemingly from nowhere. I decide to leave my bicycle and head down a narrow side street to locate the source of the music.

Moments later, I arrive at a small outdoor festival. The grounds of the festival seem to combine a swing park and a school playground.

The festival is here to raise awareness for the area of Fukushima, devastated in 2011 by the Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami. The area continues to struggle, with people living without homes, families not receiving proper support from the government, and rice grown in the area seldom purchased. This festival is described as a ‘Nation’s rallying call for the Fukushima area,’ and in my opinion, it’s a worthy cause.

Inside the swing park, small stalls sell hot food. Inside the school playground, ice is being fashioned into a snow house. Children play within the igloo, while others pose before it for photographs. Reggae music continues to play from the stage, a song about everything being ‘fine fine fine.’ It warms my heart to see this. Something about today has contained a subtle misery — earthquakes and homeless people. A community rallying together to help those in desperate need. Certain people getting drunk without a care in the world, blissfully unaware of the problems faced by others, lost to the oblivion of alcohol.

As I head back to the main road, my mind distracted by ice cream and lost in thoughts of others, I realise that I have completely forgotten where I left my bicycle.

A Wild Frog Chase

Posted on 21/12/2014 by Luke Kinsella

My morning starts with an unexpected knock at my bedroom door. Upon opening it, I find one of the Japanese men who live in my house standing there with a white carrier bag full of bread. Normally, I would find this unusual – a man at my door, giving me bread at 10 a.m. when I should be sound asleep. However, nothing is usual in my apartment. This same man, two weeks ago, gave me a box of laundry powder for no particular reason. Moreover, he believes I am fluent in Japanese. Not once has he engaged in a conversation with me in English. I simply nod, mutter some of my limited Japanese in his direction, and accept the loaf of bread.

With the thought of the donated bread weighing on my mind, I decide to hop on my bicycle and head to the nearby Arakawa Park, a place I haven’t visited before.

This park seems to have somehow partially escaped the shedding of its leaves. On one side, it is skeletally bare; on the other side, it flourishes with nature. Laundry powder and bread. It is no secret that since being in Japan, I have lost an extreme amount of weight. Week by week, I find myself becoming skinnier, although previously, I didn’t think such a possibility could even exist. Perhaps that offers an explanation for the bread. However, my clothes are in no way dirty and in need of additional laundry powder.

I park my bicycle and take a seat on a bench to read my book: Murakami’s ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.’ After consuming the book from start to finish, I take a little wander around the park. I come across a sign that says, ‘Do not feed the cats or pigeons.’ Oddly enough, I’ve seen multiple signs about feeding pigeons, often adorned with amusing text in speech bubbles, such as, ‘Don’t feed me; I can get my own foods.’ However, this is the first time I’ve seen a sign specifically addressing not feeding felines. With perfect timing, a cat appears from nowhere and takes a seat directly in front of the sign.

The ginger cat decides to follow me around the park, meowing at me for food. Cats of this colour seem to have a habit of trailing behind me. I wander amongst the threadbare trees and reach a stone gazebo. Beneath the shelter, the homeless roam – about ten in total, walking around seemingly without purpose, wearing threadbare clothing to match the trees. They resemble characters in the starting area of an online role-playing game: lost, confused, and not knowing where they’re supposed to go. It strikes me that these people, much like the poor cat, actually don’t have anywhere to go.

I leave the park and stop off at a nearby shrine, only to be chased away by two massive guard dogs on leashes. Clearly, this shrine doesn’t welcome tourists. A little further up the road, I realise that as this day becomes more about animals, a better choice of reading material today would have been Agatha Christie’s ‘Cat Among the Pigeons’ because, for a second time in an hour, that’s exactly what I see.

Leaving the stray cats behind, I cycle toward Nippori. One of my favourite things to do to keep myself occupied in Tokyo is cycling on warm days and exploring new areas. Without any real destination, I often pedal along, discovering random things that interest me. Today, the low winter sun provides the heat, and the opportunity to explore is seized.

I cycle through Fabric Town, passing a couple of interesting shops along the way. Highlights include a leather shop called ‘Touch of Fleather,’ a shoe store named ‘And Shoes,’ and a textile shop simply called ‘Tomato.’ After arriving at Nippori Station, I carry my bicycle up some steps and over the tracks. On the other side of the tracks, I am greeted by another bird in the form of a giant stone owl.

The owl describes itself as a ‘Memorial Monument for Takamura Kotaro,’ a famous Japanese poet and sculptor. Why they chose to honour his life with a statue of an owl is beyond me, but it looks nice, so I thought I would include it. The owl sits on Suwadai Street, a peculiar street that is at an elevation higher than the skyscrapers beyond. Additionally, the street boasts fifteen different temples and shrines.

I check the GPS on my camera to make sure that I’m still in Tokyo. Up here, even though I am just twenty minutes from my house, it feels like I am in the middle of the countryside. The nature in this area is simply stunning. I see a few signs with directions to a viewing point. On a clear day, I can witness the spectacle of a Mount Fuji sunset, where the sun and the mountain share the horizon. Unfortunately, I can’t see Mount Fuji — the story of my life. Nevertheless, I do get to witness the setting sun over a distant Tokyo skyline.

I cycle away from the temples, shrines, and stunning views, heading into Yanaka. The area is still uphill and features many old houses surrounded by leafless trees. I end up at a small market along some narrow streets: Yanaka Ginza Street. Conveniently downhill, the opportunity to cruise along, engaging in window shopping, controlling the flow of bicycle wheels with intermittent braking, is an enjoyment in itself. Navigating between the crowds of people, I narrowly miss shoppers who are presumably there to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t care about. As I try to remember a quote from Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club,’ I get distracted and almost crash into a woman carrying a baby. Naturally, the baby starts screaming in fits of hysteria, so naturally, I cycle away as fast as I can.

I continue cycling until I arrive at another new place, Nezu. The streets here are adorned with beautifully crafted old lampposts and festive Christmas lanterns.

Apart from a full-size train carriage parked randomly on the footpath, there isn’t much else to see in Nezu, so I head back toward familiarity. Outside Ueno Park, I study the map, desperately looking for something of interest. Four museums, but all presumably closed today; that’s how these things usually go. Then, something on the sign catches my eye. Perhaps it’s because I read about a character called ‘Frog’ today, or maybe some other intuition takes over, but the moment I spot a tiny dot on the huge map of Ueno Park below a caption saying ‘Fountain of Frog,’ I know that this will be my final destination today.

I search the park, passing dying crops and concrete views. After thirty minutes, the sun has completely set, and the weather has turned cold. Fierce winds chill the air but aren’t strong enough to dissuade my search. I cycle around the park, and each time I spot a map, I stop to double-check the location of the fountain. I often find that the fountain has changed its location from one map to the next, and on other maps, it has disappeared completely. Not one to give up on a personal challenge, I persist in my search for the elusive Fountain of Frog. Eventually, after forty-five minutes of cycling around Ueno Park, I find what I’ve been looking for.

As it turns out, the Fountain of Frog is exactly what it sounds like: a small statue of a frog spitting water into an even smaller fountain. I head home, my mind filled with a sense of disenchantment. It’s a rather disappointing end to the day, but at least I have bread.

The Amazing Kanda Adventure

Posted on 02/11/2014 by Luke Kinsella

I exit Kanda station and walk toward the area known as Jinbocho. On the way, I stroll along a street featuring thirty-six sports shops, all lined up next to each other. There is also a small festival taking place here, the 20th Kanda Sports Festival. I continue walking until I see a sign that suggests pluralisation came as an afterthought.

Jinbocho is named after Nagaharu Jinbo, a samurai who used to live here in days gone by. Although they took his name, there is little to no information about him on the Internet. Perhaps I can find something about him in one of the many history books on sale here today.

Book Town is great. One side of the street is exclusively used book shops. Little lanterns line the length of the street, and outside the usual stores, a massive corridor of small bookcases stretches the length of the event. On a typical day of book shopping, you would be spoiled for choice, but today, at the 55th Kanda Used Book Festival, the sheer number of used books in one area surpasses that of anywhere else in the world.

There is a shop specialising in only fashion books, another selling just manga comics, and another selling rare history books; they even have one book for sale for ¥350,000. There is something I find calming about walking the aisles of a bookshop. Nobody is here trying to lure me into their shop, nobody asks me to enter when I am already inside, and nobody inside is speaking. The squeaking sound of my wet shoes is the only thing disturbing the silence.

The bookshops seem to stretch endlessly. I notice some arrows painted on the floor, so I follow them to a small charity-run street festival. Rows of stalls offer various foods. One man sits at a table, seemingly designated for people to leave their used plates and cutlery. I glance at the man, and he just shrugs his shoulders; he doesn’t know why he’s sitting there either.

At the other end of the festival, more bookshops await. I browse a little longer before heading in the direction of Ogawa Square for my fourth street festival of the day. Today’s event is the Kanda Curry Grand Prix, where twenty different shops are all selling ¥500 curry in the hopes of attaining the grand prize. A polling station with an honesty policy is in place; if I wanted, I could continuously vote for the same shop over and over.

Kanda boasts over two hundred curry restaurants, making it the perfect choice of location for this competition. Outside every stall, a tout shouts at me to go buy their food. A woman in a maid outfit gives me a smile and points in the direction of the store she is here to promote. Soaking wet mascots wander around, and there is a stage featuring live music. Three young women are signing autographs for middle-aged men. The enticing smell of curry keeps me at Ogawa Square for half an hour before it is time to go.

I walk back to Akihabara and take the Hibiya Line to Minowa. Every piece of advertising space on the train is for the same company. On Japanese trains, there are usually about thirty to forty adverts in each carriage; however, on this train, all signs exclusively advertise an urban park town. Very strange.

I grab some things from home before cycling over to Asakusa, specifically to Cafe Byron Bay for a Halloween party. At the cafe, I put on makeup in the hope of looking like a zombie. Friends come and go, some with costumes and others without. Free Halloween-themed sweets are on offer, and glowing plastic pumpkins litter the cafe.

At one point, I am asked to fetch a forgotten cake from a local bakery. While waiting at the traffic lights, I notice a little child with her mother also waiting to cross the road. They are looking at me, so I make zombie noises at the child; the child screams and hides behind her mother’s leg. All in the good spirit of Halloween.

Back at the cafe, two French chefs are here to cook for everybody, and they are excellent chefs. Canapés, crêpes, and tuna gratin are the highlights. We are then treated to some live music from a local act and enjoy some delicious cake.

As the party draws to a close, a Japanese friend of mine hands me a signed copy of his book. It is my favourite book of his, albeit the only one I have ever read; the others are written in Japanese. I find it difficult to show feelings of genuine gratitude dressed as a zombie, but I will absolutely treasure his gift.

After the party, we head out to another bar for an event known as ‘Trick or Drink!’ I try to stay in character at the bar, bumping into walls, mumbling, and dragging one leg as I walk. Homer Simpson is the disc jockey, and his music choice is better than I would have imagined. My sumo wrestler friend is here too, still taller than me but a lot less drunk than the last time we met.

After getting photographed with a sumo wrestler while dressed in zombie makeup, I decide there isn’t really much else left to do in the world, so I head home to sleep.

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