Landscapes in passing, Tokyo outskirts

Having flown in on an airplane, I take on the guise, the persona, of the international traveller. As an international traveller, I am drawn like a moth toward the center of the city, the capital city — but first I must spend precious time passing through its outskirts. The center is a concentration of gleaming attractions conducive to any traveller, but also a charmed site which reflects the cosmopolitanism of those who flock to it. Busy with people coming and going, it is burnished with the regard of distant places, its business and concourse with the world at large. In contrast, the outskirts or outlying suburbs seem a dull satellite to its feverish sun, a place sunk in itself, with nothing to offer except the wear and tear of lives being lived, forever remote from the traveller passing through impatiently. The international traveller only wishes the fast train would go faster. The few remaining farm houses with rice paddies must be subject to disinterested glances from the passing train, and are hemmed in by transmission towers and high tension wires. Between low hills where there are no houses, there is just scraped up earth arranged in some drainage pattern, and more transmission towers. A single person strides across a narrow bridge over a canal, another person is alone by the water’s edge, without a dog to walk or a fishing pole. A trio of residential complexes flaunt their identicalness, as though residents of Complex A might once or twice find themselves searching for their own door in Complex C. A kindergarden, a construction site, a chain noodle restaurant, the platform of a minor station: in a moment of illusion, all these seem interchangeable, as though they could be mistaken for their counterparts somewhere along the same route. Yet compared to the city center, here there is space between things, which makes every item in the landscape stand out distinctly, at least for a second as they flash past.