move in complete silence, their shoes louder than their breathing. Long electric worms hiss into concrete stations, swallow the people, and hiss away.
I ride oceanward, planning to go north along the Pacific Coast. Daybreak in Chiba Province is beautiful with fields of sleeping grass and lakes enshrouded in mists. The days are shortening, the chill hinting a fading fall. Persimmons polka-dot the roadsides like windfallen roses, ravished by drunken clouds of fruit flies. I stop at a wall with a laden
tree branch nodding over the top. Juicy persimmons hang no more than two steps and a leap away. I am rationalizing minor theft when an old Japanese woman comes out the gate. Blushing, I bow. She smiles and asks a question in Japanese, gesturing at the tree. Beautiful, I reply, taking money out of my wallet. May I buy some? She shakes her head at the cash, disappears inside, then comes back with a woven basket of four ripe lovelies. Present, present, she says in English. She watches me eat. I bite off the point, then suck the flesh out, savoring each tender lip. Nectar, food of angels, this is how sugar should taste. Orange-red mush covers my face. She tells me I should go south to a more moderate climate. I take this as a sign and turn around toward Tokyo.
Into the megalopolis, I merge myself with the great masses of Japanese. It takes me fourteen hours to go seventy miles. I stagger in and out of crushes of people, hemmed in on every side by cars, trucks, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Up and down ramps, under bridges and over freeways, I carry my loaded bike. I accept the vague state of being constantly lost. The streets make no sense, laid in the feudal days when roads were designed to confuse invading armies. They go in spirals, circles, radiate from some center, come together in acute wedges, making comedies or marvels of buildings.
I lodge for a week at a hostel and meander all over the city, gasping at the dark undercarriage of Tokyo, its industry, its strata of life, its one-mindedness, its fascination with America. A hacking cough develops in my lungs. When I blow my nose, snot comes out black. My eyes are bloodshot from the air pollution. My throat is scratchy from car fumes. I wash it with can after can of Coca-Cola. Eventually, I get on my bike and swear never to return, in any case not with mere pocket change.
Too cheap to buy a map, I fail to escape Tokyo in a day. As the afternoon fades, I take refuge on the bank of a river that divides Tokyo and Yokohama. Sitting on a boulder next to the swamp of river reeds, I eat an early supper of rice balls wrapped in seaweed. Steamy runoffs from manufacturing plants crack the river white. The sun sets in apocalyptic colors as though the air itself is burning, turning the smog gold, the clouds molten, dangerous. Smokestacks poison the sky. The skyline of bridges and skyscrapers folds behind even more skylines of the same. Everything is smeared in this bizarre glow, even my hands. I think I can
feel it on my face. Magnificent colors, a fine death, glorious, defiant. A despairing beauty. A consummation. Abruptly, the taste of rice and nori is precious on my tongue. In my nostrils, a heaviness of diesel exhaust.
The moment might have fragmented me if it werenât for Michikosan and Tanaka-san. Something needy in my face must have stopped them short as they emerged from the grass. Smiling kindly, they lead me back to their home of plywood and appliance boxes wired together in the tall reeds. We sit on homemade stools, drinking green tea and exchanging phrases in two languages. Boys play baseball in the field beyond. Shouts in bright lights. Above us night is slowly hardening.
In the morning, when I leave them, I wish I donât have to. I lower my head and pedal to Mount Fuji. The tourists have followed summer down the mountains. I want to talk but there is no one. I wander the lakeshores, watching the snow line creeping down the volcano. Silence distills the days into one
I ride oceanward, planning to go north along the Pacific Coast. Daybreak in Chiba Province is beautiful with fields of sleeping grass and lakes enshrouded in mists. The days are shortening, the chill hinting a fading fall. Persimmons polka-dot the roadsides like windfallen roses, ravished by drunken clouds of fruit flies. I stop at a wall with a laden
tree branch nodding over the top. Juicy persimmons hang no more than two steps and a leap away. I am rationalizing minor theft when an old Japanese woman comes out the gate. Blushing, I bow. She smiles and asks a question in Japanese, gesturing at the tree. Beautiful, I reply, taking money out of my wallet. May I buy some? She shakes her head at the cash, disappears inside, then comes back with a woven basket of four ripe lovelies. Present, present, she says in English. She watches me eat. I bite off the point, then suck the flesh out, savoring each tender lip. Nectar, food of angels, this is how sugar should taste. Orange-red mush covers my face. She tells me I should go south to a more moderate climate. I take this as a sign and turn around toward Tokyo.
Into the megalopolis, I merge myself with the great masses of Japanese. It takes me fourteen hours to go seventy miles. I stagger in and out of crushes of people, hemmed in on every side by cars, trucks, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Up and down ramps, under bridges and over freeways, I carry my loaded bike. I accept the vague state of being constantly lost. The streets make no sense, laid in the feudal days when roads were designed to confuse invading armies. They go in spirals, circles, radiate from some center, come together in acute wedges, making comedies or marvels of buildings.
I lodge for a week at a hostel and meander all over the city, gasping at the dark undercarriage of Tokyo, its industry, its strata of life, its one-mindedness, its fascination with America. A hacking cough develops in my lungs. When I blow my nose, snot comes out black. My eyes are bloodshot from the air pollution. My throat is scratchy from car fumes. I wash it with can after can of Coca-Cola. Eventually, I get on my bike and swear never to return, in any case not with mere pocket change.
Too cheap to buy a map, I fail to escape Tokyo in a day. As the afternoon fades, I take refuge on the bank of a river that divides Tokyo and Yokohama. Sitting on a boulder next to the swamp of river reeds, I eat an early supper of rice balls wrapped in seaweed. Steamy runoffs from manufacturing plants crack the river white. The sun sets in apocalyptic colors as though the air itself is burning, turning the smog gold, the clouds molten, dangerous. Smokestacks poison the sky. The skyline of bridges and skyscrapers folds behind even more skylines of the same. Everything is smeared in this bizarre glow, even my hands. I think I can
feel it on my face. Magnificent colors, a fine death, glorious, defiant. A despairing beauty. A consummation. Abruptly, the taste of rice and nori is precious on my tongue. In my nostrils, a heaviness of diesel exhaust.
The moment might have fragmented me if it werenât for Michikosan and Tanaka-san. Something needy in my face must have stopped them short as they emerged from the grass. Smiling kindly, they lead me back to their home of plywood and appliance boxes wired together in the tall reeds. We sit on homemade stools, drinking green tea and exchanging phrases in two languages. Boys play baseball in the field beyond. Shouts in bright lights. Above us night is slowly hardening.
In the morning, when I leave them, I wish I donât have to. I lower my head and pedal to Mount Fuji. The tourists have followed summer down the mountains. I want to talk but there is no one. I wander the lakeshores, watching the snow line creeping down the volcano. Silence distills the days into one
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