The JaYmes Escape

Frustrated, I take another turn. I can see what looks like a wider road up ahead, but there is a large concrete wall running along the other side as far as I can see. Behind it seems to be nothing but some strange industrial buildings some way back. It’s all very mysterious. I’ve just left Phil’s flat in north-western Tokyo and I’m trying to get to the Russian embassy to apply for a visa. Actually I’m trying to get to Akabane station first, from where I can get a train into the city where the Russian embassy is, but I seem to have taken a wrong turning and have got myself lost.

A week has passed since I arrived in Shanghai from Beijing on another very comfortable Chinese overnight train; that same day I had to hunt around the sweltering back streets looking for the office block containing the Shanghai International Ferry Company, so I could buy my ticket for the two day voyage to Osaka in Japan. Back in Shanghai I rode the fastest surface transport system in the world; the maglev, which reaches 431km/h (270mph). From Osaka I took the Shinkansen Nozomi; the fastest train service in Japan, to Tokyo.

“How did you get lost?”, Phil asks with a smile as I sheepishly stand on his doorstep. I’d spotted his road and decided that after half an hour of wandering I was going to have to go back and ask exactly how to escape from this un-navigable maze of lanes with it’s disturbing looking concrete perimeter wall, which I later learn is hiding a river. “its almost a straight road all the way”, he continues unconvincingly, but then concedes he was also lost on the way home one night.

[You can see some aerial shots of the maze-neighbourhood and the river around Phils house on his very excellent blog]