Wednesday, December 26

How to perform a meltdown, how to restart a life: the last weekend in the city



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How uncanny to leave a city for good while it was wearing off all forms of life. It felt like as if no one was winning, and that even mornings looked like sunsets.

During the last days, I took a thousand photos of sunsets all over the city: at the university in the morning, at Akihabara at mid-day, at Kanagawa in mid-afternoon, in O-okayama in the early evening. Funny how sunsets look all the same everywhere, yet feel so different everytime.

Tokyo was yellow beneath my last footsteps, a proof that my lonesome city was colorful even during goodbyes. I remember now how I described Tokyo during my first days four years back. This time, when I left, it was a cold rainy Monday morning and Tokyo bled white all the same. As the limousine bus I took from Shibuya cut across the city on its way to Narita, my favorite city fixtures weren't saying hello.

Behind the frosted glass of the bus window, the Tokyo Tower was ashen, and looked as commonplace as the other radio towers dotting the city. Has someone even noticed it this morning, I wondered. I take that perhaps, I was the only person in the world who took a photo of it that day, gracing my unmistakable departure, my sweetest goodbye to my most favorite city in the planet thus far.

7 comments:

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krmpld krsty said...

Goodbye is only bittersweet til the next hello. ;-)

Hello Sandwich said...

Oh no! You're leaving Tokyo? It's too sad. I really wanted to meet you here and I will miss your beautiful photos of Tokyo. Please come again soon.
Love Sandwich
xoxo

cinta / sepi / sayu said...

This is perfect.

Lula said...

I think Tokyo is the hardest place in the world to say goodbye to. But, you did it wonderfully.

sara (moshimoshiii) said...

sayonara! must be such a sad feeling!
good luck with the tokyo hangover!
please keep posting, i love your pictures + text.