On the 4:04 Monorail,
heading out from Hamamatsucho for Haneda Airport. Lovely pink and azure clouds lit by the
setting sun exhale off in the distance near Roppongi.
May Beijing be similarly respirating.
Lots of walking today, changing subways, heading up stairs, “Would you
like to see a lovely park while we wait for the next meeting to start?” I am glad to be sitting down now. Moments ago reading my Reuben Dario on the
Oedo Subway line, I drifted off and my book fell down on the subway
floor.
What comes to mind when someone says “monorail?” You might think of the clumsy train that
connects the terminals in Newark Airport.
You might think of some used-to-be-the-future Disney-ride. I always think of the self-same James Brown & the JBs song where he pauses in the middle and says:
“If you don’t know what a monorail is . . . “ If I recall correctly, he
doesn’t finish his thought and we are left pondering a response like “No James. Why don’t you tell us?”
This monorail allows one to consider Japanese architecture
and it’s apparent aversion to the waterfront.
None of the buildings we pass along here care to take advantage of the
water that lies out before them. Never
it seems, do architects build to appreciate the view. Instead, there are factory fronts, and
windowless walls that all seem to have their back on the sea. And this is sensible, certainly, a time-honored learning in the Japanese psyche.
Every seventy years or so there is a phenomenal earthquake in Japan that
sucks out the sea and spits it back in a tsunami rage, destroying anything that
had been foolishly built, along the sea.
I have to meet someone in an hour or so. I’m not sure how engaging I’ll be. I will need to find somewhere quiet where I
can get on line. Perhaps that
last-chance sushi restaurant at the top of the stairs, before security.
And . . . an hour later, it is just that place from which I
am proofreading things, having eaten kampachi,
and aji and kohada and saba . . . Usually, the sea is generous.
No comments:
Post a Comment