While in Tokyo in late April my youngest son Kenji and I were able to escape for an afternoon on bicycles and go for a ramble through the Shitamachi 下町 area. Shitamachi is the former downtown of Edo (an older name for Tokyo) and it is still a maze of narrow streets, canals, and shops mixed with workshops and small factories. Most of the houses are small and jumbled on top of each other, rebuilt quickly after the war then rebuilt again and again with new buildings fit into the odd left over angles.
We were riding borrowed mama-chari, the most common bicycle in Japan. These are inexpensive and easy to ride. They have given up the classic double diamond design for a simple bent tube: structurally not so good, too much bending, but cheap to make. Ours were single speed with baskets and disk brakes. One rides these sitting bolt upright, like most urban bikes. They are easy to stop and get on and off, but rather slow and hard to handle at anything much above 20 kph. Riding them feels free and fun, sort of bouncy, like being a kid again. I used to have one of these when I lived in Tokyo in the 1980s, and I would carry all three of our children on it with me – Kaito on the backseat, Kasumi on a front seat hooked to the handle bars, and Kenji slung on my back.
We began by going out Kanna-dori to the Arakawa River, crossing over to the west bank and riding the excellent bike path that runs pretty much the full length of the river. Much of the flood plain has been developed into parks, sports fields and gardens, but there are still swaths of reed beds concealing birds (we saw a heron, wagtails, some swallows and sparrows). You can really cruise along here, and there were a lot of people on road bikes who blew by us. But there were also people poking along, riding, listening to the radio, drinking a beer. We kept south along the river until the Sky Tree was more or less to the right of us and then cut into the city.
In Tokyo you spend most of your time riding on the sidewalks, especially on the main streets. Bikes and pedestrians seem to mix pretty well, much better than they would in Boston or Vancouver. Of course one rides slower, and it is easy to pause on a mama-charin. Pedestrians accept the bikes and the bikes are careful of the people walking and know that a child can dart out at any time. In general, bike pedestrian and car traffic in Tokyo flows in and out pretty well, with each mode accepting and respecting the others (well, I did notice that cars tend not to stop for pedestrians at crossings).
Meandering through side streets and cutting through alleys eventually got us to the foot of the Sky Tree. This is a soaring structure, at 370 meters it is already the tallest thing in Tokyo and it is planned to go up to 634 meters. The design is a woven tube of steel with a central core for stability and to hold services like elevators and communication cables. My nephew Hattori Tastunori, a jazz percussionist, feels this is an egoistic waste of money, but I was kind of impressed with the daring. A new 634 meter tower built in a relatively poor part of Tokyo, in the flood plain of a river in an earthquake zone. The engineering is impressive, the woven steel providing flexibility and a deep foundation providing stability.
We followed the little river downstream to where it flowed into the Sumida River. This is not the Sumida of wood block prints, with reeds and birds and low wooden bridges. The banks are solidly encased in concrete walls and until recently it was purely industrial, with large barges, concrete plants and warehouses. But now they are building an embankment where people can stroll the river and they are even trying to recapture a bit of its history as an entertainment corridor for the old city. The new embankment is intermittent though, and as the Sumida has many branches as it enters Tokyo Bay we quickly got lost. Wandering about, we eventually found North and then signs for Nihonbashi. Traditionally distances to Tokyo are measured from this bridge so as far as Tokyo, a city of villages, has a centre Nihonbashi is it.
Our route took right through the business center of Marunouchi, just by Tokyo Station and then up around the old outer moat, the walls are still visible in a few spots, past the solid presence of the Bank of Japan. We got on a roll here, moving from the sidewalk to the street, and made good time up to Ueno Park. Hauling our bikes up the stairs and into the park, we cycled past the museums and into the back streets of Uguisudani. This is a much quieter and more elegant neighborhood to be lost in than shitamachi, there are still some imposing buildings in the Meiji style (based on European forms) and houses surrounded by earth walls capped by tiles through which one can glimpse formal gardens.
We emerged from this pool of quiet near Nippori Station and were able to ride under the monorail, the Nippori Toneri Liner as it is called, all the way back to Yazaike. People had been talking about building this monorail for years, decades actually, but this trip was my first chance to ride it. It is great fun to stand at the front as it glides at roof level through eastern Tokyo. It was also a good guide to get us back to where we started, and after four hours continuous cycling we were starting to get tired.
Crossing back over the Arakawa the sun was getting low and lit the river in silver and dull orange shades. On the eastern bank a group of homeless people had built what was almost a little village. For or five shacks and the odd lean-to. They looked well made and pretty weather proof. I wonder how the local police regard these settlements, traditional along the Arakawa to be sure, but these were more substantial than what I remember from the 80s, where most of the homeless men lived in cardboard boxes with a tarp to protect from the rain.
We were glad to get back to Yazaike, put away the bikes and go upstairs for tea and sweets. Our faces had a film of salt from dried sweat and city dust. Hot water felt good. Then it was back to work, Kenji on an essay on The Woman of the Dunes (his final undergraduate essay) while I got caught up on e-mail and did some tweeting (@StevenForth).
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Salt dust after
Four hours cycling
Sore wrists