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May 12, 2001

Stop and smell the planks

Okay - just back from seeing Minx play in Ebisu, and... no cockroaches. Yet. Phew. I'm still expecting to see one scuttle out from under the sofa at any moment.

Solution: don't look at the sofa.

Leaving the venue in Ebisu, having totally missed the last train, I decided to start walking back north to Shinjuku. It was about 1:30am, it wasn't too cold, I was pleasantly drunk, I'd just learnt the Italian for "He has a chip on his shoulder" - it could have been a lot worse.

So I walked. It's often said that Tokyo is a series of small towns strung around the Yamanote Line; we go to Shinjuku, to Harajuku, to Shibuya, to Ebisu - always by train. When was the last time you walked somewhere instead of driving / training / taxiing? I always like knowing where I am, how to get from A to Z - how places tesselate with each other.

Wherever I am - London, Tokyo, <shudder>Watford</shudder> - I find the easiest way to do that is by walking, linking places together myself, on foot - sometimes trying to fit my memory of the journey to a map afterwards. Trains and tubes are great for popping you up right next to your destination, of course - but where's the fun in that?

So, tonight's journey took me all the way from Ebisu to Shibuya Tower Records before I got bored and caught a cab the rest of way. I found a couple of cool-looking places that I didn't know existed before, and I also found a new route to one of my favourite bars in Shibuya. The name of this place is a closely guarded secret - catch me in a good mood and I might share it with you.

The walk also took me past a lumber yard - right next to the Yamanote Line tracks, in downtown Tokyo. I stopped briefly to savour the smell of the freshly-cut pine - and it didn't seem like a strange thing to be doing at all.

Posted by chris at May 12, 2001 04:24 AM | Permalink

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