Tokyo · the Michinoku Coastal Trail · the Izu Peninsula · October 2026
Day Two
Six in Tokyo. The first full day of it, and whatever the city did to everyone.
Tokyo · Kyobashi · Sunday 4 October 2026
10.44am. The gate. Sent without a name.
Twenty-eight photographs from the phone that has sent every trail day since, and the first of Tokyo. A flag on a red-brick front at 10.16, men in dark clothes sweeping gravel with twig brooms at 10.29, a moat and a white tower, a great black gate with people walking through it. By noon a street of signs, a pachinko hall and a beer bar; at 1.36 squid on sticks and a tray of takoyaki; from 2.55 a ring of packed clay under lights, and two men in it.
The 10.16 is a Japanese flag against a red-brick building with white stone trim; the 10.17 is the building itself, a long front with domes at each end and a square full of people. At 10.28 a fountain, a fan of water in a stone pool, and at 10.29 and 10.30 the sweepers — two men in black with twig brooms and a green dustpan, working gravel under the trees. The 10.33 is a moat with a pine leaning out over it and two of the men on the path; the 10.39 a white tower with a tiled roof on a stone wall above the water. The 10.44s are the gate — a wide black-and-white gatehouse on stone footings, visitors walking under it, and the copper-bound door inside. The 10.49 is a long low guardhouse, the 10.57 a garden pond with clipped bushes.
The 11.00 and 11.01 are two printed photographs of the same garden in other seasons — irises in flower, and red maples over the pond — and the 11.07 a tea house with a wide tiled roof. At 11.56 the street: a pachinko sign in lights, and inside at 11.58 a row of machines with players at them. The 12.00 looks down a shopping street packed with people and signs, the 12.03 is a beer restaurant’s front, the 12.07 a pink mascot girl licking her lips outside a shop, and the 12.12 a green frog figure with a ball in its mouth. The 12.14 is a shop mannequin in a stars-and-stripes suit.
Nobody has written a line about Sunday. Twenty-eight frames came in from one phone, five days after they were taken. The log has added nothing.
The 1.32 is a shrine signboard under a tree with two of the men reading it. The 1.36s are a street stall: grilled squid on skewers lined up on an orange tray, and a hotplate of takoyaki being turned. At 2.55 a ring of clay under a square roof, benches around it and people settling in; the 3.22 and 3.23 are the bouts — a wrestler in a dark belt at the edge of the ring, and two squaring up in the middle. The last frame is the group with the wrestlers after the show.
A gate, a street of signs, and two men in a ring of clay.