Tokyo Callbacks
Every country has their version of the minimart. In Houston it was the Stop’N'Go, in Crested Butte the True Value, in Los Angeles, the 7eleven, in Tokyo the AmPm, in Sydney the Night Owl. Well, in Brisbane it’s the Golden Casket. It’s rainy, and I’ve got twenty minutes to kill before the next bus, so I decide to look for a magazine, not to buy (becaue Australian magazines are rubbish) but to browse and kill some time, when I happen upon this.
Hark! I yell in the middle of the tiny convenience store. It’s JPG Magazine! I am surprised, you see, because these magazines are already incredibly hard to find in the states. You can pretty much only find them at secret Barnes & Noble stores, or by ordering a subscription online (which isn’t worth it since they only come out with about three a year). But JPG is an ideal page-flipping magazine to browse while you’re waiting in an aeroport because it’s a magazine made entirely of pictures, with the occasional photographer’s story in there. So I pick it up and read about lensbabies (every issue talks about lensbabies) and Holgas (every issue talks about holgas) and whiz past the section on street fashion without a second thought. Then. Stop. Full stop. I run into this.
Not just a picture. A tiny little package of C4 right in the middle of a magazine I’m thumbing in a Golden Casket behind a man wearing a plastic bag like a hat who smells of used mouthwash. I recognise it. Like, I really recognise it, not that “ooooh I know I’ve seen that somewhere” but in an instant I know not only exactly where and why that picture was taken but what camera took it, what time of day it was, and how many times the photographer probably had to try before he got one without any cigarette smoke in it. I know because I’ve been there.
It’s in the “Destinations” section (go figure) and in one glance I knew it was a picture from Tokyo. It’s a walkway under the JR Yamanote line just by the Yurakucho station. But it’s more than that. It’s a tiny remnant of industrial Tokyo as it was two generations ago before they all felt the need to look 20, blow 4G on a suit and smell like a soap shop even in 35ยบ heat. You can’t hold a conversation much less order in any discernible tongue from any of the tiny stalls and milk-crate tables that line the walkway because the subway noise from above clatters into your ears every four and one-half minutes to fill your entire brain with the sound of shifting steel and anxious commuters. Walking under that bridge is like walking through a time capsule.
It’s also a border. The line divides Ginza from Hamamatsucho. Ginza says, “Keep your filthy, discount priced electronic hands off of our main strip and don’t you dare touch my Itoyama,” while Hamamatsucho says “We will if you will, and try not to let your holier-than-thou elitism spread to our BIC, okay?” The walkway is a no man’s land between the neighbourhoods, but it’s also a refuge from both worlds. On one side the unattainable high life the Japanese so often seek, on the other the obsessive technology they can’t get away from. The walkway is a sanctuary where old men sit and talk and smoke and drink and avoid work for as long as possible.
And the coolest part of all wasn’t that I recognised the picture, or that I had walked through its gateway on several occasions during my commute to Tamachi, no. See, when you see a landmark like the Tokyo Tower or like Senso-Ji or like anywhere in Odiaba, you know it’s Tokyo. It’s the same as seeing a picture of Times Square, or of the Empire State building. Yeah, you’ve been there, but so has everyone else. It’s an icon. This walkway is not an icon of Tokyo. It’s a nothing. A nowhere. A tiny, insignificant corner of a busy city that’s two steps to the left different than the places around it. You can’t read about it in a tour book, you just have to stumble upon it, like the lady who sells basil from her front door, or that architecturally impressive (and apparently private) middle school. You see, the best part of all was that I understood one little space out of a gigantic fucking city all on my own. I didn’t just see the top ten list, or follow the tour guide. I actually knew the city. I was really there.