Craig Arnold's Blog, page 3

Asama-yama, 1

From the town of Karuizawa, with its restaurants and gift shops named for Alpine ski resorts, you strike off on foot up the valley toward Asama-yama, Mount Asama. The afternoon is clear and chilly, and you consider taking a bus, but the prospect of walking focuses your restlessness, gives it a pace and a direction.

Above the town you turn off the road onto an old nature trail, signposts with peeling pictures of wildlife, and follow its erratic switchback up and down the sides of ridge and gulley.

Tokyo - Karuizawa

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Tokyo is awash in cartoons. Most common are the line-drawn caricatures in the style called kawaii, loveable or cute – big heads, open and appealing faces. Metro Panda warns you not to get your fingers pinched in the subway doors. Buildings with broad faces weep enormous tears to have graffiti drawn upon them. Animate cigarette butts leap smilingly into ashtrays. Even the police have a mascot, Pipo-Kun, a sort of flying squirrel sprouting a Jetson-like antenna out of his head. On every public sur

Tokyo, 6

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A woman is kneeling upright on the floor, back straight, arms by her sides, waiting to be beheaded. It will be done with a nodachi, one of the two-handed blades used by samurai against cavalry, horse-killing swords they called them. It is the plot of something like The Seven Samurai, and one of the men lounging about on the tatami mats is the most skilled swordsman, and will volunteer. You cannot bear to see her head cut off, do not want to see the moment her life leaves her body, irretrievably

Tokyo, 5

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In the middle of Hibiya Park there is a long white tent, the sort set up to provide medical attention at outdoor festivals. On the map it is labeled Shelter for People Who Cannot Get Home. Probably it is meant for commuters who have one drink too many and miss the last train, but there is something touchingly literal about this, and ironic.

Tokyo seems filled with people who cannot get home. You have never seen so many street people, lying out on benches or pavement, bare feet thick as hooves. Ot

Tokyo, 4

At Zojoji Temple you drop a handful of thin coins into the offering box, put a pinch of incense on the brazier, bow, and immediately wish you hadn’t. It is a performance, an American’s affected openness toward a faith you do not belong to and which does not much mind what you think of it.

Around the altar the floor is raised, polished wood, over which priests and worshippers slide to and fro in their socks. It is all gold, gold paint on the Buddha and the altar and the pillars, long gold chandeli