Still in Tokyo, this was in Ueno Park, not far from where we stayed. As you can see, the sakura were falling, leaving as quickly as they'd come. In case you're confused, I'm still recounting my holiday way back in April when my folks came to visit. Since then I've been over to Tokyo-way once again, and to Australia and back! Lucky it's Spam and not ham... hmmm 3 month-old meat.

I was in great company - my Mum (and again, Dad behind the camera), Jen, Ruby and Tom. These guys have moved to a city called Tsukuba Science City about an hour north of Tokyo (no, not my parents)... yes, you may have seen them in Last Spamurai before - they came for a holiday in December and amidst all the sight-seeing and catching up with Jen's old host families from her previous 2 years spent here, she managed to sit a successful interview and bag a job at a university! They never stop impressing me. But that aside, I really appreciate them coming all this way just to live "nearby" ... yes, it's all about me.

The vibe at the beginning of Spring here is magical. It's one big carnival, with stalls selling all those edible bibs and bobs on sticks and people milling outside, just enjoying the fact that things have thawed and new life is budding...

And how else do you celebrate this new lease of life, but drink yourself silly underneath it? There were a few people who were down for the count, but most people just seemed to have that sleepy look, stupid grins and tomato-red faces... You know, that whole Asian gene thing that doesn't break down alcohol too well... The little groups of people made me think of Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, except everyone here was dressed.

Shibuya, one of Tokyo's main hubs. This crossing is purportedly the world's busiest (unless somewhere in China has superceded it) and it's not hard to believe. Dad and I stood watching the lights change for about half an hour! Maybe that says more about us than it does the place, but it really is an amazing spectacle. It's not just the flowing mass of humanity on parade, it's also the 6 storey high screen on the 109-1 building, surrounded by several smaller (but still big) screens that sometimes synchronise with the same images. We saw the dinosaur that famously walks across the big screen in Lost in Translation.

The crowd builds until the traffic stops and the floodgates open...

I guess it is understandable that people here sometimes go to extreme lengths to be noticed. I read a very insightful observation about Japan... to paraphrase: we have "advanced happiness" - (all the trappings and distractions of a mega-industrialised society)... but we also have "advanced misery" - (all the trappings and distractions of a mega-industrialised society... and the isolation and dislocation that come with them). I found that written in a blog that documents all sorts of unsavoury aspects of Japanese society... the writer is a strange guy who sees it as his personal mission to report "the truth", often with photos. I have the feeling that his site is censored in Japan as I had to do a lot surfing to access it here (kept getting "forbidden" messages), whereas from Australia I had no problems going there directly. His offerings are often offensive and unedifying and always written in hilariously shocking English but every now and then he pulls out something truly poignant.

On Sunday night I was waiting for a train in Osaka and I saw a homeless guy on the platform. That in itself is sadly unremarkable here. You see shack after shack of cardboard and blue tarpaulin in some areas. But this guy really struck me for some reason. He looked like a forty-something Japanese Marlon Brando - good looks, commanding kind of presence. In a samurai movie he would be the hero. He was clean shaven and had a classy kind of hairstyle, a bit like the prime minister's. But his shoes were falling apart around his feet and his trackpants and windcheater were dirty. His belongings hung off his arm and fingers in shopping bags. If you swapped his clothes for an Italian suit you would assume he was an executive. I wonder if he was. I wonder if he had a wife. Kids. You could imagine that one day he woke up having been teleported from his double spring mattress into a bed of newspaper. Seeing him made me feel profoundly sad. Suddenly my iPod I was plugged into seemed a pretty vain and unimportant trinket. I've had a bit to do with homeless people in Sydney - and you can't generalise, I mean people are people - but in Japan, the homeless are much less the product of drug-addiction and more of financial tragedy. They tend to be people more in command of their faculties, more lucid - just regular people who have had to weather something terrible and adopt a new routine - e.g. picking magazines and comics out of the rubbish in order to resell them. Some of these men (and they are nearly all male) seem to carry themselves with such dignity, despite their humble circumstances. This prefecture alone has a GDP larger than all but 8 countries in the world. I gather the social order that bustles by has no room for these casualties of the miracle economy - no "in" for them to re-enter. Shut-outs.

And then Japan has its Shut-ins - the hikkikomori ...young people who disappear from school/university/work - self-exiled to their bedrooms, sometimes for years, living virtual lives through game consoles, television and the internet, refusing all human contact. Their parents, for fear of scandal, often maintain a strained pretense that all is well - their son/daughter is away somewhere, doing well.

I bike along a bridge to work 3 days a week. There are always flowers half way along. Sometimes an open bottle of drink. There are no signs of trauma on the road, the path or the safety railing. I gather someone took their own life here. Then one morning recently I happened upon the bringer of these gifts. A young man in a suit on his knees on the path, offering a prayer. He hears my approach and stands up, looking over the edge to the rocks and stream below.

I'm sorry to be so morbid, from time to time it gets the better of me. There is much to warm and thrill you in this country, but there are also things we don't like to face - cracks in the facade that people fall through.

In heaven, everything is fine...

Man, I'd resolved to write less! Hopeless. Spam you later.