Beyond the Jagged Horizon

I'm sure that I've heard someone say that you havn't drunk of a city's true essence without having tasted the salty tang of life in those vast expanses of space around city epicentres; the honourable burb, outskirt or banlieu. Those places where the stuff of material dreams is planted and nurtured, where the toil of lives is spent and the respite of sleep is granted.

This place, Nigata, sits in the sweaty armpit of Osaka's long reach. Here highways hang all around; suspended canopies shielding the faceless residential blocks from the unrelenting heat. In all its unfamiliar ugliness this place is more barb than burb.

I wonder what Jeffrey Smart would have thought...He could have spent a lifetime here painting the myriad of lonely fringe dwellers arched over balconies, hanging towels or just sitting watching the throb of the city beyond the jagged horizon.

Now, in the early afternoon, this place is quiet, almost like a ghost town. It's inhabitants shuttled away temporarily by the trains that roll constantly below your feet. But as the sun sets on this place, they will return and the ghost town will come alive with the sounds of snorts, sighs and the single-minded slurp of the salaryman at the table.

As I descend into the underworld of chimes and voiceovers to await the train to swift me away I wonder why this banality strikes such a chord within. I guess there is poetry to be found in every horrid backwater.

Zen Punkster - Coloured Shower Collector - Big money Talker

Be this life - Dreaming Juice and Sunflower Peace

Disclose the Icecream - Beer is not free

Rock Japan Fest - I survived Hotel Suxxus

Hmmmmmm. Interesting place this...

Signing Off - Ryryry