This is the sound of the
floor-boards in the gorgeously decorated and constructed samurai castle
of Nijo, Kyoto. The boards make this noise to give away creeping intruders
in the middle of the night and to ensure that when somebody sneaks to the
fridge everybody knows who finished the milk.
This is the location you
see in all the pictures of Tokyo... countless neon lights, huge video screens
built onto the walls of skyscrapers... a constant barrage of advertisements,
concerts & TV shows. Thousands of people crowded the streets, catwalks,
overpasses and escalators on a night when the temperature was at 0°C to
watch a live concert of J-Pop on one of the massive screens!
A priest breaks through the din of Shinjuku-eki with the age-old sound of
his bell. In all seriousness this soundscape haunted me like no other I have
experienced here. It brings home the loss this country is suffering at its
own hands. (Yes, this bell is the one you hear in Baraka... and the monkeys
in the spring at Yudanakah were the ones in Baraka, and the traffic above
in Shinjuku is also in Baraka... you'd swear I was on some kind of Baraka
Pilgrimage.)
This eki is on the Yamanote loop line through Tokyo. It is a few stops South
of Shibuya-eki. All the stations on this line play little tunes as trains
approach, arrive, get ready to depart and depart. Since trains arrive and
depart on each of many, many platforms every two minutes... that's a lot of
little tunes for the poor station master to listen to! That's why he shouts
so much through his mega-phone and the P.A... it drowns out the tunes.
Ahhhh... peace and quiet... not in this country! This magnificent temple had
a built in P.A., children running around screaming, people crumpling the plastic
bags which are provided at the entrance for your shoes, traffic and the usual
Japanese city din. Not to mention the obligatory and omnipresent fluorescent
lights which in this case made a terrible whine. *SIGH* Only the deaf and
the blind can be at peace.
In the park behind Todaiji (temple) hundreds of
crows gather for a party. These birds are so beautiful! No wonder people write
haiku about crows resting on crooked, bare tree limbs. Sorry about the traffic
noise. This country is not big enough to escape the din of Tokyo, let alone
the dins of Osaka, Kobe, Nara and Kyoto around Kansai!
