Beauty And Chaos – Michael Pronko

I occasionally step in the wrong direction, or get stuck bobbing back-and- forth from side-to-side with someone, or simply get trapped on the wrong side of a staircase, having to huddle down to wait for the disgorged trainload to pass by me before moving on. Still, I’ve improved. When I walked through Tokyo crowds at first, I could hardly move. It seemed like every direction was blocked. Little by little, I found myself turning and responding in ways that have gradually become second nature.

My body started to mimic those around me: turning my shoulders back to avoid a pair of older women, twisting to the right to avoid an oblivious couple, or speeding up to scoot in front of a cross cutting man. Double- quick steps, short pauses, scrunching up, squeezing through, and going the long way around became movements as natural as breathing.

My body adapted to Tokyo long before my mind did. But, I’m still better than most “newbies.” It is easy to pick out tourists new to Tokyo by the way they move. It is not just a stopping and trying to figure things out, staring uncomprehendingly at the unfamiliar space and strange motion. Tourists always come through crowds as if in their own bubble.

When friends visit from abroad, they get so stuck and move so slowly I want to get a rope like for pre-school field trips, so they can keep up. Their bodies have not yet adapted to Tokyo. They dance another dance. Of course, many Japanese are able to wade through a crowd with tremendous nonchalance and occasional unconcern.

Tokyoites, too, get lost, move in one direction then randomly shift back, even stop outright before heading in the other direction. But they do it smoothly, even if with an embarrassed gesture at not following the right flow in the right direction. In Tokyo, the flow of lots of people through little space is an ongoing conflict. Changes to improve the flow, though, don’t always work as expected. The faster, smoother ticket machines and Suica cards have ordered the flow and sped it up considerably.

However, when they fail, people slam into each other like tourists. Backing out of the ticket chute is one of the few times people in Tokyo really do bump into each other. The new escalators and elevators on train platforms result in waiting clumps of people, pushing into each other and moving in awkward ways.

They have not yet learned the new motion through the new blockades.

First EPUB Edition, 2014 Copyright © 2014 Michael Pronko First English Edition, Raked Gravel Press First Japanese Edition, Media Factory publishers, 2006 All rights reserved worldwide. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author. eBook formatting by FormattingExperts.com Cover Design © 2014 Marco Mancini, www.magnetjazz.net ISBN 978-1-942410-03-4 1kitap1.com/en It was like a metaphor.

Cees Nooteboom You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury Tokyo is an empire of signs. Roland Barthes Tokyo is an empire of relations. Saiichi Maruyama Confusion is a virtue. Chinese saying 1kitap1.com/en Table of Contents Part One: Fastidious Refinement, A Meticulous Love of Life No Space Left Unmapped Automatic Tea Ceremony Floods of Advertising—On Sale Now!

What’s Your Bag? Life Delivered to the Door Half Empty or Half Full? Walls of Bottles Waiting to Blossom—Cherry Tree Maps How I Ended Up Here Part Two: A Beautiful Confusion Frames of Emptiness Clothing That Shouts—T-shirt Words Standing Libraries Reading the Signs The Point of Point Cards The Noisiest Time of Year Ordered Around—Public Rules The Delicate Ritual of Small Change A Big Bowl of Japan Part Three: Scenes from the Train The Paperback-Cellphone hypothesis The Pumpkin Train—Late Night Commuting Hanging On the Meaning The Ebb and Flow of Human Motion All the World’s a Stage-Train Platforms Slideshow Lives, Glimpses Inside Both Directions at Once, Change in the City Tokyo’s Million Marathons No Time to Spare—Schedules Part Four: Beauty and Chaos, Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life Souvenirs from the Land of Impulse—Don Quixote Elegant Eating—the Art of Chopsticks What Goes Around Comes Around—Pachinko The Tradition of Banners The Summer Whispers and Calls Bathing in Kanji—Hanging Menus Pink Power Floating in a Sea of Words Singing in the Rainy Season Part Five: A Maze of the Mind Up and Down and Down and Up—City of Stairs A-maze-ing Tokyo The Shiny and the Rough Escalators to Heaven The Love of Small Places Around and Around—Going in Circles Bonsai Buildings Part Six: After Words Seeing the City, Reading the City The City Provokes Me—Why I Write These Japan and Me After Words and Thanks Glossary Dedication Also by Michael Pronko About the author 1kitap1.com/en Part One Fastidious Refinement, A Meticulous Love of Life 1kitap1.com/en No Space Left Unmapped Maps are an essential part of life in Tokyo.

Every bookstore carries a wide selection of city maps, tourist maps, graphic atlases for driving, walking, or train-ing, and map-laden guidebooks for everything from historical walks to shopping streets to bar hopping.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 30cda17a4d103712
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,631,757 bytes (1.556 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781942410034
• Pages: 177
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 224.19 minutes
• Total Words: 44,837
• Total Characters: 271,048
• Average Words per Page: 253.32
• Average Characters per Page: 1531.34

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