6/16/2007

Shibuya River
Metroblogging Tokyo: by Martin at 4:30 PM on June 14, 2007—I walked past Shibuya River last night, it was glittering under the stars, yet it is but a miserable drain embanked in concrete…Some NGOs are making an effort to revitalize this river, hoping to making it “green” again by 2012. One group is Toziba… to support clean-up campaigns and maybe get Tokyo City [govn’t] to start considering a major project…

Shibuya’s ‘Doku’ River–What a joke.
Ok, ok, the colloquial Japanese term for a flithy river is a “dubu-gawa” (muddy/dark ditch/river) and not “Doku-gawa” (poison river), but Shibuya’s poisonous ‘Doku’ River is more fitting way to express the universal hatred of nature of modern Japan.

Earlier this year in my report on cherry blossom viewing in Tokyo, I described hanami (花見 literally, hana = blossom, mi = to view) and drinking under cherry blossoms along the Shibuya River. All the Japanese said they really enjoyed to view—-which to my alien eyes was konkurito-mi おコンクリート見 concrete viewing not hanami blossom viewing.