As I watched the imagines on the TV scene a cold stillness seemed to rest over me. Downstairs I had been amused and delighted by what I had seem in the museum. But there was no place for either of those emotions up here. Here there was only space for sombre reflection, for thinking about the people affected. This was the day when the horrors of the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 suddenly became real to me in a way that they never really had before.
It’s amazing how quickly the new becomes common. How a casual decision to run down a street one day can set that as the route for many months to come. Well today I’d decided to choose only new streets. Who knew what I’d find.
It’s amazing what can be found in a city if you just let yourself be curious
At one point I was running through a tunnel I’ve never been in before. When I came out I saw a set of stairs leading up the side of it. Stairs have fascinated me for a long time. I love taking photographs of them and I love running up them. Stairs do a great job of leading the viewer’s eyes into a picture, giving them the confidence to explore an image. This can sometimes act on a sub-conscious level – making the viewer feel more at ease with the image. Stairs are great for fitness training – kind of like a vertical sprint. There is the added bonus for me that you just don’t know where they will take you or what you will find.
There was a surprising amount of ground above the tunnel so this was going to be a long set of stairs. Off I set at a steady pace, following the steps as they twisted up and back upon themselves. At one point they flattened out briefly before raising once more in another steady set of stairs. By the time I reached the final step my polar heart rate monitor was screaming at me – telling me that I was running over my aerobic threshold. Hardly a surprise when you run up over 100 steps!
At the top there was a garden of sorts and an ugly looking concrete building. Looking closer I realised that it was a museum for the Japanese national broadcaster: NHK. Despite being on a run I decided to check it out – I’m always looking out for places to visit with the kids. Not only was it open, but it was also free so it didn’t matter if I didn’t stay long.
There was a brilliant section where you could play at being a newscaster. Standing in front of a blue screen I got to experience whales and other sea life swimming around me. When the assistant gave me a blue piece of material I could make parts of my body disappear simply by holding it in front of me. Japan is fairly unusual for using Blue – most of the rest of the world uses green screens on account of people’s blue eyes. It would be fairly freaky to look closely at somebody and see their irises where missing – replaced by whatever was projected onto the screen behind them!
I moved on, continually moving higher up through the museum. Finally I came across a section dedicated to the memory of the 18,000 people who lost their lives when the deadly tsunami struck Japan in 2011. There were still images of the destruction, documentaries about some of the people, and video footage of the unstoppable wave of water rushing island, destroying everything in its path.
I must have stayed here for over an hour, coming to grips with what I was seeing. Watching it on the telly from the safety of Sweden had had little impact on me. But now, after having lived amongst the people affected by it, having heard some of them tell me their stories about that day, and now seeing it on the screens in front of me has brought it all home.
Leaving the museum a lot more soberly than when I entered I decided that it was time to head for home. Just my luck then that I passed the Torii for a shrine that was up a long flight of stairs!
To be continued…
This is the 1st post in a 2 part series relating my experiences during an extraordinary run through the streets of Tokyo in June 2017. You can read the 2nd part by clicking on the link below:
Learning Till I Die 
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