"Out & About" Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon, Images Through Glass, ITG, Tokyo

"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.