Down Tokyo way

 I was in Tokyo for the weekend attending a rather long (winded) AGM for a teaching organization I am involved with. Even though it is only the beginning of February, the city was already beginning its slow, sure embrace of Spring.
I haven’t been there in over a year and coming back I am always eager to immerse myself in the city’s energetic cosmopolitanism.  Dazzled by the gilded splendor and youthful effervescence of Harajuku, I succumb to the momentary impulse of wanting to live here. Yet, even with the plethora of quirky cafes, bewildering array of ethnic restaurants, and the time-consuming delights of all the second-hand bookstores in Jinbo-cho, I still find myself pulled towards Tokyo’s parks, those brief green respites amidst the concrete.
Early on Sunday morning I walked from my hotel to the meeting venue, a two hour stroll that took me from the far side of Roppongi to Yoyogi Park. A cold, windswept Tokyo at 7:30 on a listless Sunday morning loses a lot of its glamour. Around Roppongi Crossing you see the exhausted touts in the all-night ramen shops slumped over the counter, or red-eyed and vacant, scrolling through their beloved smart phones. The shuttered shops at Omotesando silent and aloof, the crenelated and crinkled Prada store brittle in the harsh morning sunlight.
But then you reach the top of Tatedori, cross the bridge and slip through the towering Tori into Meiji-Jingumae. It’s like gently stepping through a sepia toned looking glass. Though with lots more camera toting Chinese tourists.
The sliding sunshine filtered down through the leafy trees (the leafy trees! We won’t see them in Muroran until the beginning of May), the soft trodden gravel underfoot, the whirr-click, the whirr-click of tourist cameras. I tarried awhile, but unfortunately, only a while. The meeting relentlessly beckoned and I had to be there to make the quorum.
From the all too brief sublime to the long, grimly quotient. Could it be...possibly...an over-egged analogy for life?
Or just a blog post too much in love with its own pathos?
You, the reader, decide.