I have been on a mission this summer to visit neighborhoods in Tokyo that I have never visited before.  I want to expand my urban view of my adoptive home.  Where are those interesting hoods?  So, after a bit of searching I set my sights on the old neighborhood of Minowa.

Minowa lies only a few stations from the bustle of Ueno, but it might as well have been on the other side of the Tokyo border.  There was an old covered mall left over from the Showa days.  Tight narrow alley ways lead away from the shopping mall.

Between the buildings coming down and the new ones going up laid a wonderland of geometric interactions with it’s inhabitants.

Wander

Wander

Click

Click

And it all fits nicely into a square.

Rain and rained it did today.  It poured so hard that I couldn’t see out my window.  I do like the rain, as long as I am not caught in the middle of it.  I saw a common species that inhabits the streets of Tokyo after a big storm.  I have named this species the “Spiderella.”  They can be found by the side of the road, sprawled out soaking up the sun after the rain stops.

It poured.  It came down so hard that it was hard to see that far ahead today.  It reminded me of what a good friend and I used to say.  That in order to truly perceive, one had to see with your ears, smell with your eyes, taste with your fingers and hear with your nose.  All the senses must be used in ways they are not used to in order to benefit from the whole picture.

Think about it.  Can you hear a potato?  Can you touch a blue sky?  Can you smell blue?

Mix it up, jumble it up, use your senses in ways they have never been used before.

All those politricksters scream for change!

But all I see is an never ending flow of non change.

So let us be the change.  Let us transform the unknown

into the known.

Let there be blue light that surrounds us all.