Sons of Loki

I decided to head back to Asakusabashi, for a stroll along the Sumida River. The trip out was weird; first time I’ve been out in daylight for a while, first time I’ve seen Tokyo in the morning for a long time.

I went to Asakusa, to Shitamachi (lit. ‘down-town’, meaning ‘old town’), way back in 2007 to find a department store that apparently specialised in fancy paper. While there I ended up down strange ancient alleys that seemed the antithesis of the Tokyo I knew, and wandering along the Sumida River, so desolate and empty compared to the Thames or the Seine or whatever municipal rivers you care to name.

It was a stroll that inspired a short story for my Writing Fiction class last year, and that little short story grew into a novel that’s 60k and counting. Head down the right passage off the Sumida embankment, you see, and you stumble across the secret artist commune that’s at the heart of my novel. Which sets most of my novel in old town, in Shitamachi. Which meant I wanted to head along and do a little research. (It’s not every day one’s in Tokyo, after all.)

After lunch at Maccy D’s, I walk.

I always feel some strange connection to rivers. I’d love to own a boat one day, go chugging along, watch the scenery go by…

The titantic bulk of the (Shuto?) Expressway.

I bother a few pigeons for cool shots.

Strange little buildings, as far from the towers of Shinjuku as can be imagined.

Could this be the secret entrance, I wonder? (Naught but a concrete wall and bags of rubbish could I peek behind it.)

The riverside walk stretches on for an awfully long way, but is desolate except for old people, the homeless, and a couple salarymen on a smoke break.

How many live here?

Fabulously wealthy Tokyo has a shanty town too. It's just that this shanty town is thousands of elaborate cardboard hovels stretched in every nook and cranny across the city.

I end up walking quite a ways along the river, all the way down to Tsukishima and its Hong Kong-esque apartment towers at the tip of Tokyo Bay. Here I stop for a sit-down at the top of a steep embankment and catch a quick nap in the less-than-blazing January sunshine.

Walking back inland towards Tokyo Station, I pop into a Starbucks populated mainly by businesspeople rather than the usual student crowd (and a woman in a kimono chatting to a Yank for reasons I couldn’t discern) and get a café latte while putting a few ideas down. Writing in cafes. It’s practically the entire point of being a writer.