Lets not forget the people...

Yay! Santa gave me a brand new Digital SLR for Christmas and oooh how fun it is. I can't wait to snap away on our travels. But in the mean time I need to learn how to use it. This past week I have been playing with my new toy, and the zoom lens I bought with it which is lovely and simple, so I've been doing what any voyeur would do - zooming mega close to people's faces, or more likely, the backs of their heads...

here are some results...

eye eye...

On completely changing ones' life

Ours is an ordered, simple existence. Japan resembles a colossal theme park. That sense of there being a huge, invisible object of authority, affecting the actions of our neighbours has been taken for granted, and stepping outside, into the dark, chaotic realms of gaikoku probably means that people won't be on their best behaviour to keep face within the group, and our chances of getting robbed by a desperately hungry person are doubled because of a) the size and b) the standard of living held by our next host nation.

But surely, such national stereotyping is one of the things I find myself loathing about Japan? Could it be that I've found myself adapting in areas I've never even tried to alter? In which case, what is even more terrifying isn't the two months we spend rootless, crossing the biggest continet in the world, rather it is what we come back to, the lifestyle and attitudes we may have forgotten.

In many ways, returning to the UK is even more uncertain than going out to Japan was.

I love travelling on the trains to work. After the rampacked journey from Kawasaki to Shinagawa (Tokyo) every morning, I now have the luxurious journey on the oh so quiet Keikyu Line, from a local station called Hatchonowate, to another out of the way, local station called Kaminagaya, past Yokohama.

Below are three of several videos I have taken out of the window of the train, on my journey home...

From Yokohama Station

I walked this street (Kyomachi Dori) to the station nearly every morning the past week gone, as Chris had borrowed my bike. It gave me the oportunity to take these and think about walking more often.

Kyomachi Dori, Nr Tsutaya

Kyomachi Dori

View towards Kawasaki Centre and Main Station

I have always looked for different ways... different ways to work, different ways home, a different way to the local shop. Recently I found this way into town, which avoids walking through the throngs of crowds at Kawasaki Station.

A more calming way, but most of all a visually overpowering route that is so exciting. With the millions of lines, made up of tracks and power cables and looming tower blocks, cutting roads, fences and road markings, the city opens up with it's mouth wide open swallowing the trains as they speed or chug by. Each time I take this route I half expect people on mini space/hover crafts to zoom out from that mouth, following each path, road, track and cables, in all directions. That would be great, just like the films Fifth Element or the obvious comparison, Blade runner (a comparison of Japan, 'done to death' says Chris).

It excites me to think I can still find new ways of seeing this place, our 'home', and also saddens me too, that we'll be leaving here without seeing all possible routes and views. I've seen Mt Fuji a few times this week, such a tease I love it, peeking out from behind some buildings on my way to work, another view I really want to put in my pocket and take away with me.

We have exactly eighteen weeks to go until we leave this house, our home for the past 3 years for Chris and 2.7 years for me. Kawasaki, our city, our shitty city, but still our base. Tokyo, which used to be my hide away, Chris' neighbour, now our neighbour. It seems more and more essential everyday, to take those different routes to work, home, and into town, but also to capture those same everyday routes to work, home, and town. The shopping street, our alleyway, our neighbour's garden, each and every bus stop into town with it's quirky seating, the sky line of every view, the progress of each building site, each angle, and each corner of everything that we are going to leave behind.

Enough talking I'll get snapping then!