Request of the Month: We think Goro kun is a city person. I hear the rumor that you often take a walk in the town. I personally think Shibuya and Daikanyama are your kind of towns. Do you have any favorite town or the town you enjoy taking a walk? (from Naoko)

Crossing a giant intersection in Shibuya, there is a big video rental shop which just opened the end of last year. My 6 nights 7 days video rental was overdue and they have been calling me nearly a week. I might have panicked a bit (?) and harried to Shibuya station after the taping of "SMAP X SMAP". I was in this kind of circumstances many times before. I remember that whenever I ended up being late to return something, my father scolded me, "If you don't return something, you can't expect someone to return a thing he borrowed from you." I paid 3000 yen for being late to return the video. When I was putting the blue membership card for the video store to my wallet, I realized that there are 4 membership cards of the same video store in my black nylon wallet. These four cards were issued at the stores in four different towns... Shibuya, Omote Sando, Ebisu, and Ginza. These are my favorite towns... I moved up to the coffee shop on the second floor to have a cappuccino.

After having a sip of cappuccino, I looked down the people on the street while shuffling the membership cards. People are walking in different speeds crossing the intersection around this time of the day. There are young people coming to the town. There are tired office workers holding some magazines heading to the station. A kid on a skateboard who is a public nuisance. Shibuya is a town with many faces of people. It is the least biased town in Tokyo. I like to walk around the slope which go through from Fire Street to the left side of Park Street. There are boutiques on the right side of the slope and cafes stand on the left side. Behind this pretty cute slope, there is a park which is not well kept. Next to the part, there is a Chinese noodle shop with an oily banner hanged on the front. The store does not much to the atmosphere of Shibuya, but I secretly think this is the best Chinese noodle shop in Tokyo. Many slopes from the station became the main streets and there are more things hidden between the slopes. The faces of the front and the back of Shibuya are so drastically different. I guess I like these different faces of Shibuya.

I stop my hands which were shuffling the cards unconsciously and turned up the card on the top. It was from the store in Omote Sando in Harajuku. I lived in Harajuku for three years but it was inconvenient for daily life and not the place to get used to live. There is a GAP store at the corner of Maiji Street and Omote Sando. Some fashion magazines take the snap shots of young people in front of the store. But I don's think these people are comfortable being there. On the other hand, the nice part of Harajuku is people coming to the town can feel the feeling of "being seeing" and stimulating each other; yet, the town itself never accepts anyone in a real sense. The resistance to accept anyone became the reverse power. That's how Harajuku became the point of dispatch for many cultures and attracts young people. Other words, it is not "young people's town" but the town itself keeps its youthfulness forever.

Harajuku has an interesting contrast compare with Shibuya. My favorite thing in Harajuku since long time ago is the view of Donjunkai Apartment in the late afternoon sunlight peaking through the trees. I love the view of the apartment from the pedestrian bridge. Also, I like to take a walk around Omote Sando in the morning. I feel like I got something nice when I take a walk there in a nice morning. ( The branches of the trees hanging in the sky look like small veins around early spring.) The season for talking a nice walk is almost there. After the long thoughts, I tried to stir my cappuccino with the cinnamon stick. It was completely soggy. Shibuya, 19:30. Someone I was waiting didn't show up.