Tokyo in June

Here's a picture from Shibuya yesterday. I'm not in the picture. I see a lot of tourists walking around with selfie sticks. I saw one girl yesterday standing in a crosswalk, smiling serenely into hers. I continue to find it odd that there's evidently an audience for this. It seems kind of kimoi to me, hokey.

So far it's not been nearly as hot as I was expecting it to be, which is good because I no longer have a straw hat and am wearing my brown felt hat.

My brief visits to Tokyo this year have felt very different from my visit just a few years ago. I can see why the locals are so disturbed by the sudden influx of a foreign population but there are points where even people with no ability to speak Japanese are integrating. I took the train from Narita airport into Tokyo where I'd booked a room in Shibuya. I was wandering around on foot, trying to locate a particular neighbourhood. I went into a convenience store and asked a dark skinned young woman of possibly Indian or Indonesian heritage where it was. She didn't understand my Japanese and asked me to speak English. There was a young man, another possible Indian or Indonesian or Nepalese, behind the counter at another convenience store who tried to conceal from me his inability to speak Japanese. It seems this growing service class may be similar to the way Mexicans and Mexican Americans have been siphoned into such work in the US. Still, Japan compares well to my recent memories of the US where a massive visible population of homeless people is in stark contrast to a new population of extremely wealthy people. I have seen exactly one homeless person in my wanderings in Tokyo so far this week.

And here's a giant blowfish.