Tokyo Random Walk

I went to a kind of art fair today, which the gallery was participating in. It was unusual: set in a plush hotel, and each gallery had a room with en-suite bathroom in which to display its work. Most galleries didn't make full use of the opportunity to do something new and unusual in a hotel space and just used the space like a regular gallery bar the odd bed and sink. But there were a couple of really atmospheric video projections in the glass shower cubicles and occasionally some inventive uses of bathtubs and beds as platforms for exhibiting art works.

It was in a pretty leafy riverside area of Tokyo, near my university campus and so afterwards I decided to do a random walk around nearby areas which I'd never been to and see where I ended up. Here's an image of the strangeness of Tokyo's urban landscape:


I wasn't entirely comfortable with having to walk underneath this colossal death-trap for the next five minutes.

But my random walk turned out to be amazing: one after the other I kept running into random places I'd been to just once before but had had no real idea of where they were in relation to the rest of Tokyo because I'd always gone there by tube. Two of the places were right around the corner from each other and I'd had no idea. Everything started to fall into place and it was like this epiphany or something. And then I came across this funky bookshop!


One of those days when fate likes to toy with you.