It seems an eternity since last smelling rain falling on warm earth, while visiting this sea of humanity. The latter platitude is more appropriately applied to Tokyo than any place on this earth, at least of those I have visited. I walked around the lake inUeno tonight after dinner, rain be damned, listening to the background buzz of a city overlaid by emotive cries of night herons and the swallowing, hollow gathump of bull frogs. While savoring the fine petrichor, I marveled in the fact that other life forms have successfully jived with such kinesis and infinite lay of (mostly) uninspired but seismically stable architecture and imponderable sprawl of concrete.
It is my sweet 16th visit to this country, the archipelago I fearlessly continue to negotiate by cutting wide and vulgar swaths through its language and etiquette. Yesterday I became imprisoned on the wrong bus that, after a gruesomely long haul, ended up where I had started instead of where I was going. [Read more…]