A Wide-Eyed Grip

Walking home in a drizzle, my shirt turns dark wet, sticking to chest and arms, the coolness of wet cotton a relief from the late June humid mugginess. Unconcerned and enjoying a rainy season twilight walk, I almost stroll with thoughts wandering back to a few student journals from the afternoon. Ten or twelve journals, most of them well done. One young man writes well, always including descriptions of his beetles, butterflies, fish and other specimens, and always laced with sketches of flowers and plants and ladybugs. Remembering the line about his biology teacher, I smile… ‘I caught an insect and gave it to Mr Ishii who is my teacher of creatures.’

What I learn about the students from the journals is forever engaging. No dark secrets, but a fair number reach beyond the mundane to share their thoughts, worries, fears and joys. There too, are the inserts like ‘I’m tired,’ or ‘I’m so sleepy.’ But their study load is heavy and they are pushed hard, challenged constantly. Few write about times of simple relaxation. Kamioka-kun is a big surprise and his journal a delightful record of many interests. He keeps seven catfish at home, each with a name. Writing of his garden he expressed heartbreak over the recent death of a flower, a freesia. If he writes the truth—and I believe him—he held a funeral for the freesia. Arata’s journal is a mix of words and drawings and he likes to call himself a bad boy, but it is clearly a pose. The journal is exceptional, each entry either amusing or appealing. A skateboard freak, he also writes music, performs in a rock band and paints his fingernails black.

I reach Kugayama wet-through and decide to stop in Summit Store, a convenient shelter from the rain. After a few minutes and little in my basket I leave the store dissatisfied, irritated by the several tape players set up around the store shouting out the day’s specials, and blaring TV quiz show music.

Only a few minutes from home and the rain still falling, I stop to look at the Kanda River’s swollen rush through its narrow channel. Both ducks and giant golden carp are hidden away somewhere safe from the churn and tumble of water. At one spot in the torrent an upended plastic milk crate is snagged by something under the water, only a raised side and corner of yellow plastic rising above the tide of water. Perched on that yellow corner an oily black rat, wide-eyed and resolute holds a perilous grip on the crate’s edge.

The Kanda River in a quieter moment

Snake in the Grass

The neighborhood I live in is pretty enough to occasionally inspire a flowery description of one thing or another, and there are even times when you wonder if words can meet the task. The last week of March and first two weeks of April bring hundreds of people to Kugayama, all eager to walk among, admire and photograph the cherry trees which are at the peak of bloom and paint much of the town in the pale pink wash of spring. The Kanda River flows for a good distance through overhanging cherry trees, and wind-scattered blossoms fall to float on its surface, turning the water into a giant squiggle of pink ribbon.

But such is not my story this time. The seasons regularly redraw the neighborhood and the Kanda, and what’s pretty in pink one month will show a different face, put up a different picture the next. So, let me try to convey the scene when nature and people are not in a lyrical mood.

The Kanda River is one of those odd canyon-like city waterways trapped on both sides by high walls serving as flood barriers. Parts of the river are home to dingy gray carp, great fat things that eat almost anything. Mixed in with them are some brown ducks and turtles. More than a few times I have stood leaning over the railing looking down, marveling at the indifference the fish and ducks pay to the litter which decorates and clogs their unnatural habitat. One day I stood gazing into the grainy, half clear water, watching the ducks quack about, splashing and hopping from the water onto a grassy bank, where one or two old Coke or beer cans lay. Half submerged in the middle of the river was a bicycle someone had thrown over the railing and into the water. It was working as a partial dam in the current, and I could see a carp nosing about a plastic bag caught in the spokes.

After a few minutes I spotted a very large snake swimming downstream, headed straight into the schooled carp just below me. Three excited schoolboys on the opposite side ran up and down shouting, scrabbling in the dirt for rocks to throw at what looked like an aodaishô, or common Japanese rat snake.

“Hey, I almost hit ’im on the head!” the oldest of the three screamed with horrible glee.

“No fair! That’s too big. You can’t throw that.” One of the boys had found a stone the size of a brick, and was about to launch it at the snake.

“Oh, yeah? Watch this,” he said, hurling the stone with all his junior might, missing not only the snake, but the water as well.

“What an idiot!” the one in a Metallica T-shirt jeered.

With that they seemed to give up on throwing rocks and contented themselves with merely watching the snake.

It was fast approaching the carp, making a straight line for them, but they ignored the snake as it swam among them, then the snake turned for another of the grass banks coming out from the stone walls. It finally slid out of the oily water and approached a drainage pipe in the wall. Finding that blocked, it settled somewhere in the deep grass, disappearing from sight. I noticed a man opposite me on the other side of the river gripping the rail, knuckles strained white, and a look of pure horror on his face. He stretched out over the water, body bent, his arms fixed in stiff angles to the railing while his eyes bulged and strained to find the vanished snake.

A moment passed, and maintaining his posture over the railing, the man shouted across to me and laughed. “Did you see the snake? It was a snake. He’s down there in the grass.”

“Yeah. I hope he doesn’t decide to climb up here.”

“Yiiiiiiiii! Don’t say that. Don’t say that!” and he laughed again.

The Kanda’s Winter Face

Took a walk along the Kanda River today. In warmer months I enjoy a few hours each week strolling the pathway over the distance between Inokashira Park and Hamadayama. I was curious this time to see how much the face of things had changed as we move deeper into winter. The Kanda is not a large river, and in the section I’m most familiar with, is not wide nor deep enough for even a small boat. The river runs for a little over twenty-six kilometers through Tokyo and is locked into tall concrete walls along either bank. But despite its small size and those concrete walls it is well-endowed with trees, flowers and wildlife. Most visible are the giant carp and the ducks. Birds are plentiful, and on more than one occasion I’ve spotted snakes swimming leisurely downriver, or slithering across my path. But the most remarkable characteristic of the Kanda riverbanks is the great number of cherry trees which for three weeks in April turn the river into a long winding cloud of pink.

At this point those trees are skeletal in their bare branches, and most of the pathside flowers well past their season. Still, there is green enough in the river and on the tiny islands built to channel the flow of water, to paint a picture of more than just dried brown, cold water and concrete walls mottled with moss and lichens.

Small bridges appear every several hundred meters, and many of those are decorated with old wrought iron panels of the local wildlife. The first photo at the top shows one of those panels with water, duck and ayame (pink iris). Growing in spots along the path at the top of the concrete walls are “Fatsi” or Japanese Aralia shrubs with their peculiar white flowers which the Japanese call yatsude (eight hands). A third photo gives an idea of how small maze-forming islands have been built into the river channel. I’m not sure if they’re meant to confuse the carp and the ducks, or to offer a scenic view for walkers to look down upon.

The last photo is an interesting composition of shadows, the one to the left of the tree really catching the man with the camera off guard.