Photographs from a small group of islands
In a country where rules are expected to be adhered to rather than broken, people know all too well when they are in the wrong. And this young salaryman, having a cheeky side street cigarette, was definitely no different.
Situated in the western reaches of Tokyo, the Okutama Ropeway has been abandoned for nearly half a century.
Opened in 1962, the plan was presumably to tap into the massive population located a relatively short journey away, but the visitors never materialised. Or certainly not in the required numbers. The ropeway’s short, 600 metre, 6 minute hop from one seemingly random spot on a reservoir to another, clearly not enough to draw the crowds. And so, just 4 years later, it closed, leaving the two cable cars to sit where they were left on that very last day — silent and forever passenger-less.
Beautiful.
Strangely peaceful objects.
Objects that in their secluded, now very natural settings, make for lovely sights. And despite the massive financial losses the project must have suffered. Not to mention the disintegration of at least one persons dream. They are, unlike many haikyo/abandoned places, genuinely nice spots to visit.
Particularly over the weekend, the likes of musicians, jugglers, entertainers etc. are common sights in Tokyo’s parks. Pole dancers, on the other hand, aren’t.
Or at least they weren’t.
The massive commitment that goes into maintaining a bonsai is sometimes hard to imagine, especially so as it is often passed on over countless generations. Hundreds of years of work and dedication with the sole aim being a perfectly shaped, aesthetically pleasing, tree. Each and every one of its owners or carers unrecorded — their names utterly irrelevant. All of them subservient to the arguably never ending quest for perfection.
Factors that, for me at least, further add to their natural, and also weirdly unnatural, beauty. Yet at the same time, none of the background stuff really matters. Not in the slightest. Only the bonsai does.
Tokyo is a wonderful city of contrasts: people, fashion, districts etc., the differences are all there, right before your eyes. And yet none of them are arguably quite as stark as the regular portrayal of it as a modern technological playground, and the rather more prosaic reality.
