I rode my bike over the big bridge that spans the Sumida and Ara rivers, up above the Senjus and discovered a little part of Adachi-Ku that seems to have been forgotten. Tokyo has been growing and changing. This place did not. In this little part of Adachi there are rice fields almost hidden behind thick hedges and vegetable gardens the same.
Old farm houses, and a "Sells everything" sort of local shop.
There was a little coffee shop. I ordered the breakfast set, generous with eggs and jelly on toast English tea, a little salad and a bowl of miso soup, my first time in 20 years of breakfast sets to get miso soup. And to top it all every customer that left the shop before me stoped to nod and say something Some gave a full bow. There was amazing wall paper art on the main wall, faded and tobacco stained, an image of the great New York skyline, from the queens side, he artist only choose to show one bridge, the Brooklyn. But the main image in the foreground was the space age buildings and wide large runways of Leguardia Airport. It was the size of a big Fuji painting in a sento, but this one was not like a Fuji. This was about "Empire" It gave me a chill.
One the way back toward the river at the end of my ride I passed a 90 year old man zooming the other direction in an electric wheel chair, smoking a big new white cigarette, and further along a 100 year old woman wrapped and covered every inch of skin, as farmers do, bent and working in a vegetable field.
