ON NEAR MISSES; or, ヱビスで旅をちょっと贅沢に

one of the announcements out of both tokyo and shinagawa stations got my hopes up about the internet. supposedly the bullet train has complimentary wireless service for all of its riders. my AirPort detected an open network when i turned on my computer, but i wasn't able to connect. once i'd canceled out of that initial window, my system preferences stopped picking it up. if only i'd given myself time to have the wherewithal to look up suggestions for how to use wireless in japan during my two so-far internet sessions. (you'll have access to this after my third if i give myself time to have the wherewithal to transcribe.)

unfortunately, i've only wanted to pay for enough time to be at my most mundane, which reflects my round of page visits and not -- the unfortunate part -- the color of my experience. case in point: the bullet train makes it happen, internet or not. (i just asked a train attendant, and it's no better here than at mcdonald's. i have to have a pre-existing wireless contract.) but there's the mountain, and i get as many different views as i want. this train is fast. really. and the tookai line curves around the corner out of tokyo bay and onto the pacific coast in a way as to allow several different vantages of mt. fuji over five or ten minutes as the tracks glide southwest through shizuoka prefecture. i think we're nearly through it and on into the next one. who knows? i'm the only one looking out the window to take in the view.

earlier, it was something similar in ginza and hibiya. i've not spent much time on the central west side of tokyo. the areas around tokyo station aren't so much frequented by students, not only because they don't host any of tokyo's major universities, but because they're the work and play grounds of the graduated elite. you're imagining blue chip corps, the diet building, the imperial palace and the same designers as you'll find at omotesandou, but with a clientele defined by an unmistakable older, monied gentility. alex made an astute comment about the nuance of "affordability" before we made our way onto chuoo-doori, a wide north-south thoroughfare decorated with high-end retail and boutique cafes, a "pedestrian paradise" now closed to motor traffic. i let myself take a picture while everyone shopped. after so many years, it's refreshing to play the tourist. for anyone interested in how long that last paragraph took: we're just now passing through hamamatsu.

i'd planned on one photograph today. i don't have one of tokyo station, a site (sight?) that, i think, is confusingly named and warrants an explanation. it's something like grand central, or like any of the gares in paris, but it's named for a city with hundreds of different train and subway stations, many of which have more contemporary visual and word of mouth cache than tokyo (station) itself. it is, i suppose, nice to be able to buy a ticket that spells out clearly a trip from tokyo to kyoto. after all, i'm the happy tourist today. i'd have been happier if the entire station hadn't been under tarps and scaffolding. japan or japan railways or someone is restoring the station to its original early 20th century glory. maybe there's hope for the teikoku hotel (one station away from tokyo at the border of ginza and yuurakuchou), although there's ultimately nothing to do about restoring a frank lloyd wright original; and maybe that's just desserts for letting a frank lloyd wright original be torn down in the first place. granted, the sixties were a time of change. (a bathroom visit, a can of beer, and we're stopped at nagoya.)

so no picture. give me a thousand dollars in two years or so and i can come back and take you one. at least hibiya park lived up to the romance of unexperienced nostalgia. i don't know this part of tokyo outside of books, but the dilettante modernist aesthetic of 1920s tokyo comes through on the terrace of that "high collar" curry joint we hit after a half hour of indecision in the ginza. it's housed in a building at the center of the park that's another obvious reconstruction, but the sense of being at expensive leisure (not so much spending but spending time away from the things that could help you to spend) is enough to let you redraw the scales and imagine that where you're sitting has, in fact, stood since 1903, a strange not-long long time ago in japanese history.

the bullet train won't let me onto its internet, so i still don't know who won the gubernatorial race in ohio. from the numbers i scanned in the paper a couple of mornings ago, i don't have much hope that kasich didn't take the seat from strickland in ohio. i haven't lived in ohio for nearly as long as it's been since i last lived in japan. and 'looking good in pants' is seriously non-partisan. but a kasich regime, that government is lamentable. john kasich made it very clear that, if elected, he would return all of the stimulus funds earmarked for high speed rail development in ohio back to the federal government. maybe, having probably elected kasich as their governor (should i hold out hope that strickland saved the dream until i'm on the web again and actually transcribing?), the people of ohio don't want a fast, comfortable, environmentally friendly way to get between cincinnati, columbus and cleveland. they don't know what they're missing. that's a shame. you'll have to share your pleasant memories of our trip together with your elected officials. avoid impending catastrophe. otherwise you'll just have to come to japan.

we're only ten or so from kyoto, and i have to reorganize for a bus ride. don't worry, you might never have as interesting a trip on public transportation as mine this evening through gion, but at least you still have the bus. hopefully ohio won't get rid of that too.