Adventures in Japan

Walkabout and Other Odd Bits.

You know what is a great way to start the day? Not having to pay to use a dirty shower in a communal bathroom that often smells of other's salty leavings. It's been half a year since we have indulged in such a luxury. Man, time, she flies and stuff. Plus, it's amazing what people learn to put up with.

Here's a fact about myself that maybe you don't know. I really enjoy walking. A lot. There's something so soothing about it. You get to soak in your surroundings and reflect and all that good stuff. Plus it's not nearly as show-offy as jogging or running. And by show-offy I mean strenuous. Here's a fact about myself that most of you know all to well. I am often times quite stupid. Put those two facts together and you get what happened this evening. Maybe I'll set the stage even more...

Back when we lived in Abeno, we would often walk about forty five minutes to get cheap rice. That forty five minute walk took us the equivalent of five or six subway stops on the Midosuji line. Easy as. Now that we live in Tachibana, I'm only five stops away from work. I reckoned I'd walk home from work to see how long it took. Plus, as I've mentioned, I do so enjoy a good walk. And I did enjoy this walk too. But it just kept going and going and going. There's a big difference between the spacing of subway stops and of train stops. Train stops are much more spaced out. Take a moment now, dear reader, and hazard a guess as to how long my little amble took me.

The first leg of my journey was easily the most enjoyable. The sun was still up, for one, so I could enjoy my surroundings a bit more. Lots of small parks. Lots of dog parks too. With lots of cute dogs in them. And birds. Lots of birds. One such park also had a pond in it. The were fish below the water in the pond. And insects above it. Small, fat bats dove at the insects, feasting in the dusk. Well, they were either bats or leathery birds. I watched the birds, bats, fish, dogs and insects for a while, just digging the whole scene, man. Enjoying it so much that it popped an idea into my head.

Another, commonly known me fact: I went to film school. One of my classmates was a fine fellow named Ian Toews. I don't just call him a fine fellow because he has won awards for his films. One of these award winning films was a Japanese landscape shot from a moving train. That's an oversimplification, but it'll do. I have not seen this film, much to my shame, but I thought that I could make a nice companion piece to said film. I would film my walk home. The scenery was quite nice, mayhap a bit residential, but interesting. Plus I planned on walking beside the train tracks all the way home. Many, many trains passed by me on the way home. All filled to the gills with weary looking people. Whereas I was quite enjoying a brisk stroll. I even had a name for my film. Aruite. That's Japanese for 'on foot' or 'walk'. Yeah, I thought to myself, I'll do this walk a few times, taking different routes to pick the best bits to walk along. There were a lot of good bits. I had to cross a couple rivers on rocks and stuff. There was variety. Yeah, the more I thought about it, the better this idea seemed. Then the walk just kept going.

After an hour and a half, the idea of the film seemed to start mocking me. Every dead end, every double back laughed at me. Then I made it to the great big river. I had to hike about twenty minutes out of my way to find a way across it. Some of that time was spent walking on the side of a busy yet not well lit road with no sidewalks or even shoulders to speak of. Stupid idea for a stupid movie.

So, in the city you can walk six stops in roughly an hour, give or take. Five stops by train takes about 3 hours, the first two stops are about fifteen minutes apart on foot, so it's more like 4 stops in 3 hours. Probably less, if you factor in that I wasn't so daisy fresh near the end there.

My legs still hurt, just so you know.

On the plus side, I was so tired that I slept very soundly. Didn't even notice when the trains started running at around 5:30 in the morning or when the construction started at 8. Our flat is a bit noisy.