joubee

Tokyo Update

In travel emotions can fly by quicker and more intensely than at home, a bit of a whirlwind it is. I walk about 5 miles everyday...today as I was listening to my head phones and walking to Roppongi, not bothering to smile at anybody anymore because they it is positively futile here, six cops race past me. Just when they are 10 strides in front of me I hear the patriotic anthems blaring from half a mile down the road. This is the fourth time I have seen the communists, they are everywhere. I can:t help but have a smirk on my face everytime I hear the fervid preaching gibberish in the background and see the covered ears and head shakes of those by me on the street in the foreground, usually carrying shopping bags or drinking coffee. I can:t find any way to say it without echoing a Steven Spielberg script but what I saw and what I thought had me in tears on the street right then. I pulled my hat down over my eyes.
The men in the black van were smiling and laughing as the police postehaste blocked them from entering the embassy packed streets. They were close to my age and dressed in tatters. I saw a little boy with his father pass me on the sidewalk inquisitively gandering at the spectacle with one arm pointing and the other determinedly being tugged the other direction. I imagined what I would tell my child if they asked me why. I would want to say `some people care for the other people they live with, and want to change it for the better`.....`some are looking for something to believe in and to belong`. Then the last thought I had rendered my hat feckless to maintain a dispassionate street ficade.................I am doing neither.