Apocalypse when?
July 28, 2008 | Filed Under Japan, Inspiration
A man once told me that you could see Mount Fuji from the Ginza crossroads during the war. All it took was for the B29s to firebomb every intervening building between there and Yokohama. But those twin evils of modern cities, high-rise buildings and pollution, have once again blotted out the mountains which ring the Kanto plain where twenty million Tokyoites eat and sleep, and work.
Once in a while however, the air clears a little and the mountains force their presence back on the city. They start in the south-west with the Tanzawa and Hakone ranges, up to Takao above Hachioji, and then further north to the mountains of Chichibu and Okutama.
Tonight they ringed the city at sundown as a jagged purple line. They brooded, harsh and uneven against the lights and sharp lines of the city. You took something from us, they say. One day, we take it back…
Yuka watches the clouds roll in like the sea. “It’s a sign.” she says.
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Sunday evening must have been a beautiful sunset over a wide area of Honshu. When I got home about 6:30pm and opened my windows, a perfect rainbow (with outliers on both ends) stretched across the yellowing sky beyond my east-facing balcony. With the greening rice paddies in the foreground, country houses and sugi-covered hillside in the mid-ground, I was tempted to dig out my camera and capture the scene. Instead, I just stood there and enjoyed it, watching the sky slowly change to purple, ignoring the steel skeleton and high-tension wires that stretched across my view.
I can remember my dad’s excitement on those crisp winter mornings when we could see Akagi, et al on the northern Kanto from our house in Kawasaki. Occasionaly, though, I do miss those “Hinomaru” Kanto sunsets with the single red orb against a plain sky. Here in the inaka, the sun dips behind some mountain before it has a chance to even turn orange.
Always look forward to your pictures though. Thanks.
Wow! Truly amazing photos!
Hey KamoshikaBob, good to hear from you! We only moved to this apartment a couple of months ago, and it was the first time the mountains had shown themselves. I can’t wait till winter when the skies clear and, as you say we, we should get some great views!
Melanie - thanks! I love the light at sunset. I think that probably well over 90% of my photos are either sunrise or sunset..
Again, great photos and writing.
Who knows when. Buzz on the street is that a Tokyo earthquake has been statistically late for a couple of years.
Hi Kirt - I committed the list of great Kanto earthquakes to memory before I first came out here in ‘92: 1703, 1782, 1812, 1855 and 1923. Roughly every 70 years.
Earthquakes and tectonic plates are strange animals though, and sadly not very ameniable to statistical analysis except on a very macro level. The magma underneath changes direction, and the plates bucket and move and tension in different ways. It’s actually quite relevant for anyone who travels in the mountains, as the movement of magma over time will throw off the magnetic declination of any map (OK, you’d need to be using a pretty old map - but my father in law still uses his maps from the 70s and 80s, which may well now be off by a degree or so. I should check next time..). I wrote a short post about it a while ago:
http://i-cjw.com/blog/2007/05/21/magnetic-north/
The “overdue” Kanto earthquake used to worry the bejezus out of me, but after a while there’s only so much worrying you can do and your energy is better spent preparing your emergency kit. Otherwise known as a good excuse to buy more camping gear
Chris
Skyscrapers aren’t evil. Far better that people live close together near others since it means less energy needed to get around and heat and so on, and towers do that more effectively than anything else.
And that way you keep the quiet bits of land even quieter for those of us that like to get out there…
wow, stunning photos! We’ve had some amazing sunsets down here in Osaka as well, and a few nasty thunderstorms.
do you have any plans this summer? Julian just headed to Hokkaido with his dog Hana, and I’ll soon be following in his footsteps (in exactly a week). If all goes well, we’ll be meeting up on either Rishiri island or in Wakkanai.
Hi Dan, good to hear from you.
I actually quite agree. The irony of calling skyscrapers evil whilst living (and at the time, writing and photographing) in one was not lost on me. Nor was calling *them* evil just seconds after referring to the firebombing during the war.
I wanted to set a discordant, off-center tone to the post to reflect the feelings we had as we watched that magnificent, but portentious, sunset that evening. Those firey reds and oranges really put me in mind of a giant conflagration happening somewhere beyond the hills..
Pollution though - definitely evil. No irony intended there.
Hope all’s well!
Hey Wes - Hokkaido sounds great this time of year, nice and cool. I went a couple of years ago in January and snow shoed around Shiretoko for a few days, but didn’t make it up to the mountains. Remember to take your bear-bell!
I’m off to Kyoto this weekend for some R&R, and will probably do a quick run up Ibuki seeing as I’m there. Late September I’m thinking of doing a big Ho-ou, Senjo, Kitadake, Aino, Shiomi trip over one of the long weekends. In between, nothing planned as such but hopefully I’ll get up to the hills for a couple of weekends. And then the snow starts, and things become interesting…!
Really stunning, wow!
That is a fantastic view from Tokyo! Not one that a lot of people manage to get! Which part of Tokyo is it, may I ask?
My university just got out for the summer and I’m getting ready for a month of walking. I think I might try to walk from the southern end of the South Alps and walk as far north as I can. I’d love to walk all the way to the Japan Sea, but just don’t have enough time. If I can’t lay out a good path that way I might take five days and walk from Kiyosato to Okutama, about five days. Whatever I do I’m spending as little time as possible here in Chiba, that’ for sure!
Thanks RJ. I’m a big fan of your work, by the way.
Wow, Butuki, a month of walking! Can’t wait to hear what you get up to. Gotta say, I’m more than a little jealous..!
The photos above were taken from Kachidoki, just across the river from Tsukiji and Hamarikkyu gardens.
I don’t get the time to read as many outdoor blogs as I’d like. Yours I tend to save for when I can take the time.
Few outdoor blog postings do I send out links to. And, usually, none do I email out to people who aren’t “in” to the outdoors. But yours I have.
I can think of no better way to express it.
David - thank you, truly, that really means a lot. I’m deeply touched.