Last train home

On Saturday night I took the last train home from the gay zone in Shinjiku. Even though I had read Sarah’s great descriptions, I was still surprised of how much this moment was like a piece of theatre or performance art. People seem to run out from everywhere and although you see people rushing to work and home again, this has a totally different energy partly because it’s mostly young people dressed up, often in some wild costumes.

I only had one direct trip to make and at Shibuya there was a chaotic scramble as the police waited at the top and the bottom of escalators getting ready to turn them off. A girl in a tiny short purple skirt with green spots and blue stocking with red platform shoes runs thudded past me to change to the JR.

They had already put the roller doors down on one half of the stairs and a group of men where making their cardboard rooms for the night. Even this had a staged feel; they all seemed to be very clean and over 60 and their cloths where dusky blue, grey and kaki. But it was the soundscape that made it strange, their precise movements where accompanied by the stretching and snapping of masking tape. Even at this low point there was a kind of practical aesthetic efficiency. Poor guys, it was a cold night.

At that time the only cars on the road are taxis.