Ejovi Nuwere

Where does your candidate stand on the issues?
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Last night I had a conversation with a friend that made me think of the time I lived in Osaka. I begin thinking about the dirty canal that my apartment window overlooked. The canal runs through the city with a number of small bridges at various points. I lived off the corner of one of those bridges. Sometimes I’d stand on my balcony during the cooler days and watch people as they walked across, wondering who they were and where they were going. I never stayed on my balcony long. Pollution from the cars and trucks crossing the bridge was bad enough to kill a small animal.

Sadly most people used the canal as washing machine drainage. Yet the pollution didn’t discourage people from actually swimming in it. Not so much swimming, but definitely diving into it. During the Japan / Korea world cup games whenever Japan won a game thousands of people, mostly college age, would walk over to Donton-Bori (the main bridge) and jump in. Men and Women, naked or near naked. This foolishness wasn’t limited to Japanese; foreigners did it too, including two of my friends who came out of the river green and stanky.

The canal wasn’t limited to crazy college kids, washing machine waste, and fish–oh, did I tell you homeless people fished in the canal? There were also dead bodies, rumor has it the Yakuzaa would get people pissed drunk to the point that they can’t walk, offer to drive them home and instead drop them into the canal. On one occasion while walking home I saw the police dragging a body out of the water. So I am pretty sure it’s true.

The best part of living on the canal was when it rained. There was something about watching people scurry across the bridge, the rain drops falling then simply disappearing. I wanted to believe somehow that the canal was being reborn, clean and fresh. That all the troubles it may have seen through the week or month was being washed away.

Wishful thinking perhaps, what’s that saying? A tiger cannot change its stripes—after the rain and when the sun shined down on the canal I’d tell you otherwise.
Continue reading ‘Doton-bori (Osaka Canal)’