Now, when talking of Kafu, we cannot overlook his journal called Dancho-tei Nichijo. Leafing through the summary in the paperback, I found an entry on the page for September 16th, Showa 7, that he had visited the Kanou-ya in Kakigara-cho. There was a hospital he used to go in Nakasu, which is located next to Kakigara-cho, and that area was mentioned quite often in the Dancho-tei Nichijo. So I decided to set my starting point at Suitengu in Kakigara-cho. I thought it would be a reasonable place to meet for the members of the walking tour who intended to trace the route Kafu had walked.

Entering Ningyo-cho from Suitengu, we walked through Amazake-yokocho toward Hamamachi Park. It seemed that most shops were normally closed on Sunday, and the street was pretty quiet. Taking a peek at the back, we found an alley with much traditional atmosphere. There were some houses within the shopping district. Did these houses once have stores as well? I heard that such kind of houses were called "Shimota-ya." The word was derived from "Shimouta" (closing a store). Although there were some things to see such as the green belt, the statue of Kanjincho, and Meiji Theater, we still had not found anything very appealing. So we kept on going and entered Hamamachi Park. There was a gorgeous athletic facility there which has been maintained quite nicely.

Here we happened to be unexpectedly caught in a "trap". We call it a "trap" when we have our attention caught by something while walking and cannot move from there. There was a little lane there in the park that enabled us to experience a massage of the foot-pressure points by walking on small stones, and so we tried it with our bare feet since we were very interested in health. As we were unfamiliar with this kind of thing, we all felt nothing but pain. After playing on it for a while, a young mother and her little child came and joined us. It seemed that this facility was quite popular in the neighbourhood. I wish there was one in the park close to my house!

Having become all "healthy" now, even a first-time member remarked how pleasant it was to be caught in a "trap." The meeting was proceeding at its usual pace: after someone said, "The god Inari is the pre-eminent god in Japan," they ended up going to all the shrines dedicated to Inari along the way. Others were photographing pavement stones and manhole covers with designs that seemed to have been taken from the famous poem, "Old pond, a frog leaps in, water's sound," by the poet Basho who used to in the Fukagawa area. By now we had almost forgotten that the subject of this tour was Kafu. That was the essence of walking. We cannot keep thinking about where someone had gone before us. The important thing to become one with the town you are attracted to.

One of the "traps" we expected to see was the Kiyosu Bridge built over the Sumida River. It's a railroad bridge modeled on the Cologne Bridge across the Rhine River in Germany, and it was one of the projects that were started under the "Reconstruction starts with a bridge" catch-phrase after the Great Kanto Earthquake. It's called Kiyosu Bridge since it connects Kiyosumi and Nakasu. We stopped walking for a while, and took pictures from all angles. There was a monument indicating that it was recognized in the year 2000 as a "Select Civil Engineering Construction" by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, together with the Eidai Bridge. Interestingly, the monument was titled, "Twin Gates to decorate Teito (Imperial capital)."

The highlight of this tour was Kiyosumi Garden. Mr. Yataro Iwasaki, a founder of Mitsubishi zaibatsu, and his brother Yanosuke had established this garden. All the stones had been shipped in by Mitsubishi & Co. steamers and arranged throughout the landscape garden, with water brought in from the Sumida River. The fact that such a large and gorgeous garden was part of someone's private home is beyond surprise; it is very impressive. It was opened to the public in 1932 by Tokyo City. Some people were happy to be able to just enter; others were delighted or disgusted at the sight of giant carp gaping widely, waiting to be fed. They were really too big too big to be called carp, and perhaps because of their rustic quality, I felt that they did not match the rest of the garden. The Western-style public square being attached to the Japanese garden was beautiful. Leaving the Japanese garden area and passing through a narrow path where a gate might have been before, we found ourselves in an open field that looked a bit too wild to be called a lawn. The space was romantic, surrounded by trees and with benches and tables here and there. Looking up we saw a small slice of the sky as if we had entered a clearing in the woods. Tired from the summer heat, we all sat down for a while.

Even though we still had a long way to go we managed to spend quite a long time there. In order to arrive before dark at the Eko-in, another highlight of the tour, we changed course and headed north. Going across the Mannen Bridge over the Onaki River, we visited Masaki shrine and Basho's hermitage. After that we thought we would be able to proceed without making any more sidetrips. But of course we stopped many times at various places on the way to see such sights as a roof garden; a cute ceramics shop; a sign that said "Telephone telegrams"; a tin-roofed barbershop; a supermarket's name written in old characters; bean-paste rice cracker; a sumo stable; the god Inari once again; and so on.... There is no enough space to write down everything one by one. I'm sure Kafu would be able to put everything in order perfectly.

I was somehow not totally satisfied with the walking this time. I'd like to visit one more time before long, and be captured deeply by some "traps." This is why I can never quit walking around town.

Translated by Maiko Noda