two brief glimpses: #1 — so i’m driving back from chiba last night, & once you get out of chiba/saitama & hit the expressway, it’s total video game mode, speed limit’s allegedly 80 but everyone’s doing 110-120 (except the lane-splitting motorcyclists — they’re speeding), & the expressway’s got those huge concrete noise baffles along both sides, so it’s pretty much like driving in a tunnel with no roof, with the occasional exits & junctions where one or several multilane carriageways split off or wrap over & under & around each other, but you get the picture, it’s just a featureless concrete tube packed full of speeding cars, & then without any warning you go over this little crest & the noise baffles drop away & the road swings right to bridge one of the rivers, & there’s just this absolutely insane vista of tokyo by night, neon & buildings & lights for as far as you can see, totally beautiful…
two brief glimpses: #2 — of course, that was followed five minutes later by getting stuck in a two hour traffic jam, which kind of sucked (note to self: more CDs. in the car.) but wow, that view…
two brief glimpses: #2b — you’d be surprised how much those expressways actually move when you’re effectively sitting there parked on them… it’s not something you notice when you’re in motion yourself, but when you have ample time for contemplation… huge trucks were rocketing by in the outbound lanes, & yeah, even allowing for the air they were displacing rocking the car on its suspension, the expressway was totally swaying & shuddering… part of me was telling myself they’re designed & built that way, but still, the amount of movement was something i noticed quite acutely while inadvertly parked across an expansion gap in pretty much the exact centre of a bridge over yet another river… the front of the car would shake as a truck approached, then the wind would hit & rock it side to side, then the back of the car would shake as the truck disappeared into the distance… i’m not sure if there’s a word for Fear of Being Drowned in a Car That’s Plunged Into a River After an Expressway Has Collapsed in an Earthquake, but it certainly provided a distraction from the mesmerising tail-lights & shiny billboards…
