walking Tokyo

There are things we will never see, unless we walk to them.
                          --Thomas A. Clark, 'In Praise of Walking'.


Life in Tokyo tends to move at such fast speed, from non-place to non-place, to the inhuman, ruthless rhythm of trains, allowing no time to perceive neither change nor permanence. Everything is two-dimensional, flat, insignificant, insubstantial.

Yet how different things can look like when you open an existential parenthesis, take time into your own hands and walk the city, from morning to evening, the natural cycle of a day. Your perception of space is utterly changed and you realise how the city is composed of amazingly distinct topographies, of places with interconnected names and histories, with their commonalities and singularities whispering to you from below the glossy surface of commodities.

Dearest Spring Typhoon walking friends, many thanks for your time and company, from Komagome through Nippori, across Ueno to Asakusa on the Sumida River, retracing former horse tracks in the toponymic memory of old Edo. On foot, of course.

Tokyo, between Komagome and Asakusa on the Sumida River
15 May 2010