Walking, walking and more walking.
One of the main activities of my time in Tokyo has been walking. I’ve walked to Ginza, to Asakusa, to Akihabara, to Ojima, to Kachidoki, to Shimbashi, to Shiomi and all places in-between. I’ve not quite made it to Minato City for Tokyo Tower or Edogawa for Arakawa River yet, but who knows, maybe next week I’ll venture that far out.
Keeping fit is one of the reasons for me electing to use my own two legs as my main method of transport, rather than the epically proportioned rail and subway networks of Tokyo. The other, and perhaps, the main reason, could be called sightseeing, although for me it is slightly more a case of seeing life going on around me, rather than spotting typical tourist sights, which sightseeing usually conveys. My eyes are sweeping along the various streets, roads and avenues, my feet are walking down. I’m gazing up the restaurants offering a multitude of cuisines, many displaying pictures of meals served. I see the stores selling household supplies are commonplace, whereas clothes retailers tend to be mainly in the shopping centres. Another, conceivably surprising addition to the Tokyo scene is the proliferation of European-style bakeries making a variety of cakes and pastries at high prices, which are popular with the well-heeled ladies of the city, especially at the weekends. The queue outside my local one is always nine or ten deep of fragrant ladies under parasols.
I enjoy walking off the main thoroughfares just as much, down those narrower streets, where houses are cheek by jowl, where pavements are just differentiated from the highway by a white line. One of the charms of these less busy streets is the remarkably different styles of architecture that complement each other. There are funky new apartment blocks, next to vintage machiya - small, mostly wooden town houses, just over the road from an abode that looks somewhat like an akiya (old vacant property). Then, just when you least expect it is a shrine, complete with banners, stone animals and an ink stamp in a box. You might think it is someone's drive, but if you look carefully, you’ll often find that shadowy uneven ground is actually an entrance to a small but peaceful park.
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time walking down streets like that. I’ve gone out with just a phone, a packet of Polos and a plan of having no plan! I left the mobile internet Wi-Fi thingamabob behind as I didn’t want to rely on Google Maps or other such location-finder apps to influence my wandering. I don’t have mobile internet on my phone – well, I do, but I can’t afford to use it on my current plan whilst in Japan! Plus, if it didn’t have a pedometer and audiobook app on my phone, I’d have left it on the side in my apartment as well. For more than seven hours over the last three days, I’ve wandered about freely, deciding which direction to turn at every crossroads only when I get to it, and happily getting lost. Every now and then, I can honestly say that getting lost is the most fun. I advise you to do it, no, really, go and get lost sometime this week!
