I think back to my Tokaido walk as I now bike it. From here, we’re on the Tokaido, one of two main roads connecting old Tokyo (Edo) and Kyoto hundreds of years ago. A commuter hub for folks who work in Tokyo but don’t want to pay Tokyo land prices for their parcels. The station is neither small nor large nor of any architectural grace. The arrival to Totsuka is without fanfare. The columns will soon hold the road, and the road will daily ferry tens of thousands of cars north towards the cities of Yokohama and Kawasaki and beyond. They loom large above still-in-use fields. Concrete plinths hold columns that look like the ancient remains of an advanced people. The most surprising thing I run into is the new highway being cleaved through the landscape just before Totsuka.
Sweet j p bike Patch#
Otherwise, the ride to Totsuka delights with banality: Meandering back streets alongside elementary schools, a tiny bamboo grove, a woman in a smock working a small patch of land, a tiny park at which I once saw two grown men, identical twins, in their 60s, swinging on the swings like children, prefab homes and well-made concrete designer homes - the usual fare. You can catch a glimpse of it if you sit on the west side of the trains in and out of Kamakura. Years later, I’m still not convinced a monorail is better or more sensible than a simple train track, but it sure is more fun to watch.Ĭlose to Ofuna, the head of the giant, white, Kannon of Ofuna Kannon-ji appears on a hill through the trees.
It gives this otherwise nowhere zone of suburbia unexpected personality. I’ve never not been delighted by the insanity of the monorail: A hulking, elevated track that appears from seemingly nowhere, and upon that track - gliding just a few meters away from bedroom windows, with a wild rumble, no elegance - carriages trundle like a passing storm. On the way to Ofuna you ride beneath the monorail tracks. The ride to Totsuka takes you first to Ofuna. So I think: No problem, I’ll snag a bagel at Bagel Montreal, one of the best bagel shops in the area. Shops open and close willy-nilly, with little regard to official or published timings. Assume nothing is on schedule around Kamakura, along the coast, in the Shonan area. I head for morning coffee at my beloved POMPON CAKES BLVD., but they’re closed. School children in colored caps bounce along the side of the road in hundred-meter-long lines, corralled by watchful teachers. Put an ear to the ground and you might hear a burble. Up and out the valley of Hase 5-chome, where old maps seem to indicate a river once ran. But now, in early November, it’s mostly hidden.īlue skies. In a month the leaves will be gone and it will be plainly visible. You can just about see the top of his curly weathered crown between the trees.
The ride begins behind Hase’s Big Buddha.
0 kommentar(er)
