image: A. Douglas
“The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
I first glimpsed Yumenoshima out of a train window, on the way to Chiba. Just before the gleaming spires and faux volcano of Disneyland pop into view on the right, there is a stretch of green, broken only by the distant glint of a glass dome beside a pyramid-like structure and an extraordinarily tall chimney.
Yumenoshima [1], which literally means “Dream Island,” is where Tokyo buried its excess trash in the 1980s. Rubbish was pumped onto the sea floor and covered with soil, grass and trees. Then a bunch of sports complexes, a pool, a tropical greenhouse and a garbage treatment facility were built here.
I visited on a perfect autumn day. The sun was shining. No one was there. A strange stillness hung over the park. There were no birds singing, no children playing, just fields of shrubby orange flowers rustling in the wind, scraggly palm trees, and yachts bobbing up and down on the harbor. There was a distinct smell of eucalyptus in the air. [2] I felt like I was all alone in a slowly suffocating part of the world.
Above it all loomed a huge candy-striped industrial chimney pumping its emissions into the air.
I headed in, down a pebbly path, looking for the thing that had drawn me here in the first place. It wasn’t hard to find. The shining glass dome stood by the sea. It was a surprisingly large greenhouse attached to a garbage incinerator. Through the greenhouse’s misted panes, I could see palm trees, looking more lush than their forlorn cousins outside), ferns and orchids, a waterfall and other strange tropical plants.
I bought a ticket and went inside. The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.
Inside was a dusty painting of a jungle with two monkeys nestled in the grass by Henri Rousseau hanging over a table of orchids. How appropriate, I thought. Rousseau had never left France [3]. This painting rekindled a feeling that had been nagging at me during my whole visit to Tokyo. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it represented, but somehow, Rousseau’s imaginary jungle seemed very appropriate in this greenhouse on a pile of rubbish called “Dream Island.” 
referenced works
- Yume no Shima Koen (Dream Island Park) - Japan Visitor Blog report ↩
- Strange no mention of the homeless, of which there are a considerable number living -- and often sunbathing -- in this park. ↩
- Tropical Forest with monkeys (1910): Henri Rousseau never visited a tropical rain forest. He created his scenes from pictures he saw in books and on trips to the botanical gardens and zoo in Paris, where he lived. ↩
location information
- Name: the Tropical Greenhouse
- Address: Koto-ku, Yumenoshima 3-2
- Time of story: early morning
- Latitude: 35.650734
- Longitude: 139.828784
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
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