Yes I can, spending a little time in Yokohama, I have been able to eat a whole meal, beginning to end with chop sticks; which came with my meals. I tried as much to eat an original Japanese or Asian meal as possible. When I came across a KFC, there was a Trini pride in me to buss up a snack pack, 2 piece and fries; compare it with ours. The Japanese KFC, is very American.
Here I was in the furthest I can be from home, in a space that seem locked away, through language, a space that I would have to negotiate visually and through the many information booths installed in the many malls; there were many, you will enter one from the hotel, then enter another, from another, you can enter one from the train from Tokyo, walk in another. They will go down several B1, B2, B3 and will go up to floor 5.
All this experience will happen in the delightful grace of design, design as art, sculpture, landscape, my feet, my eyes never got tired of the amazing hyper-reality of living design…..look at the gadget there for holding the doors from swinging in, their design of toilet bowl; I walked into a little toilet room and the bowl seat stood up at attention, there was a humidifier and an automatic air freshener, wow, I had the most pleasant of bowel movements, press a botton, wash meh butt.
I'm a cynic, standing in the depths of high design culture, an intense sense of design imparting human behavior, patterning how we behave and allowing for the behavior to be achieved can be totalitarian to a man coming from an unruly space as Trinidad, I will not go to Tobago, as Tobago is still away off of becoming unruly a space as Trinidad. So I had to find where the grit was, the edgy space, I had to find the crack and the creases, see the people, hear the what it all means. So I tighten up the shoe laces and took a walk, a long walk from the water front, where we were based. I spent the whole day in that walk. I reached the Yokohama Stadium, there a baseball game on, I sat there and here I started to see, the old men taking naps, a man collecting cans, walk further, the apartment came to, hanging on the on the balcony were the daily clothes of the men and young women, who greeted us at the hotels. There were so many of them, how do they managed I ask, a young academic Japanese, Brazilian, studying Japanese migration to Brazil….he mentioned that the service sector people are very vulnerable.
I walked further, as the day got long and the feet screamed to get a rest, I turned away, started back to the waterfront, the bay, the words, kept coming back to me, that I needed to see that space in the night. I will like to see the shop that I went into, selling DVDs, the flimsy curtain that separated the porn room, from the DVD and music room. Said a lot about the space, there are soft lines marked out that when crossed you get a whole idea of how people lived. Like the little bar/restaurant at night looked like a place that will embrace many of laughter and pain, of men, drink to despair, will go home and cause much tears, love…laughter.
Sitting on the stoop of Yokohama, I wished so dearly, to still peel away a her skin to reveal behind the many layers, the many selves, the many voices. Her voice, what does she say, when he returns from work; lifting the many bags, at the hotel. he will pat, his daughter in the head, they will sit for a meal and make love to his wife, she will bid him farewell in morning, or he will make breakfast, he will stay in late; he is on the night shift, drop the daughter to school, later, he will kiss her goodbye, as she rides off to work. She will pick up daughter on her way from school, the daughter will be in school care……oh man there so many, that I will ask.
What I know there is definitely a positive and a negative in living in a space that have such a high index on social design, there must be fall out due to stress, etc. But coming from a un-ruled space where we all aware of the fall out, for not investing properly in social design; road deaths, murder, domestic violence, environmental stress, shoddy building, lack of maintenance of environment, poor education, lack of intellectual life etc. The fall out at the implementation of a social design policy, will see both our environment and our physical being transformed, it will have some fall out…will we be willing to embrace that fall out. cause even as I sit in the vulnerable of space, there is still the visibility of intelligent design negotiation, in the craft, engineering, architecture, something not visible in Trinidad and Tobago.
THERE IS A NEED TO INVEST IN SOCIAL DESIGN.
BELOW ARE PICS. ENJOY
