Tokyo from the 49th floor

Tokyo from the 49th floor, originally uploaded by Jaqaroo.

Nice view from up here on the 49th floor. I'm relaxing with an iced latte and a window seat. Trying to pick out the places I know, but the city looks different from above compared to street level. I've always thought Tokyo's beauty... if it has any... is in it's details; those little surprises and small corners, which do still exist, although they are being hunted down and concreted over. But even from 49 floors up I'm not sure we can actually say the city is beautiful. It's just that we are surprised by the unusual perspective the altitude gives us, and perhaps simply the sheer size of the city and the number of buildings we can see from our vantage point. Usually you can see, how many buildings, about 10 or 20 from a street corner, perhaps more. But up here there are thousands, countless. It's all starting to look a little like the computer generated cities in the latest Star Wars movie. Perhaps Tokyo is a virtual city. Perhaps it only exists in our minds; we are not really here at all. I know a lot people here who are not really here... there is no here, here.

Stick

Stick, originally uploaded by Jaqaroo.

Thought is the real Butterfly Effect, don't you think? A thought can cause small ripples that fan out across your reality that turn into waves and change everything. And that's how it should be.
Without the waves we would be sitting in the middle of a flat calm ocean looking at ourselves in the mirror-like stillness of the deep.
Had the very early universe been uniformly flat then small clumps of matter could not have have formed, clumps which in turn clumped together... and the next thing you know you have several billion glaxies all containing several billion stars.
Thought leads to action and action leads to movement and growth and life. That's the theory anyway. Sometimes a big thought pops into your head, which can be quite scary, and the action it calls for is more than you can manage. But the thought won't go away so you had better just get on with it and see what happens. Everything usually turns out for best anayway, so don't worry about it.
Do you ever get the feel that the universe had just been waiting, patiently, for you to move into the right place, and that once you were there it was as if a key had been turned and things started to move like they hadn't moved previously. The mechanism had always been there, like in some ancient Egyptian pyramid or lost city Indy Jones lock.
Still a few turns to go though.

July 2 2005 Live8 Tokyo

July 2 2005 Live8 Tokyo, originally uploaded by Jaqaroo.

Went to the Tokyo Live 8 concert today. When I read there was to be a Tokyo concert I thought I might as well try to get tickets, even though the line up was not one I would normally pay to see. I was lucky and got tickets.
I watched 4 out of the 7 bands... sorry Bjork, catch you next time, promise.
After the conccert we went to Costco, the massive wholesale supermarket. An uncomfortable contrast but I shopped anyway; what else can you do.
The bands were all pretty good, in their own way. I find I'm becoming more like John Peel in my opinion of musicians, if not the music, in that I don't like to make personal criticisms of people who obviously enjoy and have a passion for what they are doing. The world needs diversity in all things.
The thing that will stay in my mind though was not the music, but the videos they showed on the big screens in between the music. One of them showed two young African brothers, unable to hold back the tears of despair when talking about their mother who had recently died. They said their father was ill and subtitles on the screen told us that their father died shortly after... Having a son not much younger than them made it unbearably heartbreaking to watch them...
What can you do? A question I increasingly would like to find an answer to rather than just ask...

See the vidoes for yourself on the Live 8 website.

End of the Line

End of the Line, originally uploaded by Jaqaroo.

The more things change the more they stay the same...
Or as the French say, "Ze more sings shanege, ze more zey stay ze same...".
My French is a little rusty these days, as is my Japanese, as are my knees, but that's another story.
Well, what do you think about this for a station? I teach a couple of classes here on Wednesday afternoons. And I thought it was only bloody Select that had out-of-the-way class locations!
If you can name this station I'll give you 10,000 yen, an enormous box of luxury heart stopping chocolates, a years subcription to Train Rider Monthly and half my kingdom...

Train Window

Train Window, originally uploaded by Jaqaroo.

The thing about change is that you never really know what is going to happen once things start happening, and perhaps that's why people often try to avoid change in the first place.
Like those puzzles where you have a diagram of some cogs in a row and you are asked to say which direction cog "E" will turn when cog "A" is turned. Except that in real life there are more cogs and they can turn in more than two directions.
But that's what makes it interesting and life enhancing...