If you go down to the woods today...

Being New Year, everything's shut here until at least tomorrow, so I've been at a bit of a loss for things to do outside because galleries and museum are all shut too. So I thought I'd take a walk in Yoyogi park today. "Yes that'll be nice and quiet," I thought. Oh no it wasn't, the whole of Tokyo had decended on Yoyogi park so as to visit the Meiji Shrine. And when I got there people were mostly leaving, walking en masse down the avenues of the park and caught up in this moving crowd I felt like I'd ended up on some kind of protest march.

Except why protest when you can spend money?! That's the genius of capitalist democracy! And the soothing female Japanese voice that eminated from the loudspeakers hidden in amongst the trees seemed to know this as it lulled people with soft calls of "coffee, tea, ramen, rice balls, cakes and sweets - why don't you come and rest your legs - we humbly await your custom."

I was in no particular rush, so normally I would have walked for as long as it took to get out. However, with making an exit now a priority, the park seemed to triple in size so as to keep me trapped within its leafy bosom for as long as possible. When I finally got out I was greeted by people with signs saying I should repent my sins to Christ. I wondered if eating at KFC and McDonald's three days in a row could be considered a sin, realised I'd now learnt the Japanese word for sin and content with that, moved on, sinful and unrepentant as ever.