Miyu, when I received your message, I suddenly remembered the smell of the paper in a writing set.
When I was at elementary school, I imagined that the letters from a friend who had moved far away smelled of that unknown town. Maybe my friend too imagined a nostalgic whiff of Tokyo from my writing paper.

I know what you mean about sensing dreams in the city crowds.
I wonder about all the different destinies passing each other by when the lights are green at an intersection. And when I disappear alone into the crowd, in a positive sense I feel like I’m nothing, and I have the thrilling thought that I don’t have to be so afraid to live as I please.
I love this unchanging energy.

Sometimes I feel sad as well.
The face of Tokyo is changing; shops and restaurants close down and new ones open, roads get wider, train stations are rebuilt underground. It makes me envious of people who go back to a hometown that still greets them with the symbols of its identity, like the mountains and the small shrines and the rice paddies.

So you’re a shitamachi downtown native! In my mind, the shitamachi areas are the parts of Tokyo that change the least. What were the smells, the sounds and the flavors of your neighborhood? Have they stayed the same?

Incidentally, Yoyogi-Uehara where I was brought up smelled of shampoo mixed with steam from the back streets, with the sound of futons being beaten, the rumbling of elementary school students’ roller-skates over the undulating asphalt, the flavor of red bean paste donuts, which are red bean paste buns deep-fried in tempura batter, etc., etc.
Up until about twenty years ago, it was still a pretty simple place.

Let’s gradually profile each other in these Round-trip Letters. Until the day we go eat curry together!