Tokyo ~ Downtown

Tuesday, March 19th

I am near Tokyo Dome, where the Giants of Japan play. Currently drinking drip coffee that was made with the careful nature of a smiling, concentrated Japanese woman. Upon welcoming me into her cafe, the little warm atmosphere engulfed my senses. Oh & there was upbeat Jazz playing as well.

The tiny cafe has four outside facing windows toward the street and if it wasn’t for the chalk written signs on a board indicating this was a place people go to… Well then I would have kept walking.

As the woman twirls the hot water above the ground coffee beans into the spiral paper cup ~ The uneven balance of the coffee roaster & the vinyl record spinning keeps this place in perfect harmony.

My time here in Tokyo has been brief. Yet this morning, I have captured the light of the morning and made a most uneventful walk from the Hibari station across the gates of the Imperial Palace. The walk has been immersed with finely trimmed trees of asymmetrical qualities. They remind me of the Monterey Cypress and take me back home.

I couldn’t help but try to find refuge in a friendly voice ~ sometimes too much silence is deafening for the senseless thought motifs. I tuned into MIIS Radio and was catching up on their most recent post. An interview with the owner of Captain + Stoker, a local sustainable coffee shop in downtown Monterey.

The sheer amount of passion & willingness to serve & coexist with people and create an environment for community is exactly the place Captain + Stoker aspires to be. Taking care to ensure artisan espresso while all the same cup of goodness being served in a cup made out of corn at a place with no place to charge your phone or laptop. Implicitly allowing for more human interaction.

As the podcast finished, so too did my walk along the Imperial Palace steps. I briskly walked with the morning commuters towards the skyscrapers until arriving on a street corner of a building unlike any other.

What soon captured my eyes, was a sudden peaked curiosity into the stunning green landscape just outside the clear glass doors of a tall business skyscraper. This was the art & work of Japanese landscape architecture at its finest.

There were a multiplicity of plants, shrubs and the occasional blooming flower to highlight a bright vibrant color scheme. I had never been so enamored with a natural presence amidst the street corner of bustling Tokyo. I began taking pictures all along the edges of stone and zooming into nature’s beauty, as she often does call us to look closer.

A breath of fresh air, a chance for the mind to catch hold of itself and smile at the simple pleasure of life in bloom.