"Out & About"
"Out & About"

August 2004 marks my 20th year in Japan... 7,300 days of irrevocable time.  That McDonald's across the intersection is one I ate in a few times back in 84 and 85 when I was working for a company in the Iidabashi area.  And there was that party up the hill (going in the opposite direction from this view) at the rich expat's place where I seemed to be the least financially-enabled person there (by far).  Another time, I ate at a cheap local restaurant (near where this photo was taken) with a highly skilled jungle-warfare foreigner who was working at the same company I was (your worst enemy in a foreign country is someone from your home country competing for the same work).  Also in the area:  Yasakuni Shrine - ever in the news when prime ministers visit it - is just a twelve-minute walk up the hill and a little past those white buildings in the background.
     Just a humdrum corner of megacity Tokyo, but something about this particular corner makes me feel melancholy....  Probably the double-punch of that party at the rich expat's place and the cheap dinner with the jungle-warfare fighter who was hitting the mark with his poison darts at the office as he swung from the ceiling.
     A massive infusion of cash would cure that old bug I'm sure... so I keep looking around the next corner, but 7,300 days on after arriving a poor immigrant on these far western shores (look at the map if that one confuses you) I am still chasing the elusive Japanese Dream.

Copyright 2004 - Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon, Images Through Glass, Tokyo