Food and Drink

The bright lights and busy streets of Tokyo’s well known entertainment hubs are similarly well known and documented. In fact I posted a small series of photos from Shinjuku’s red light district and its environs just the other week.

Head a bit further west into the city’s more suburban areas, however, and the scenery isn’t all that different, it’s simply much calmer, and nowhere near as in your face. A factor that in many ways isn’t a bad thing. Far from it in fact. So here then are photos from several hours of simply wandering a little over a week ago.

At the end of last year I posted photos of this incredibly rickety old Chinese restaurant in east Tokyo. Back then it had been in operation for 65 years, with the master carrying on from his grandfather, and the mama-san a cheerful addition to the family run operation.

However, like so many such businesses, locations, and dated buildings in general, it’s not if but when the end will come. Old age, the dilapidated state of the structures, and the understandable reticence of a younger generation to take over, means there’s invariably only one outcome. And this particular closure hurt more than most, as I ate there on countless occasions. Each and every visit as fascinating as the last one, as there was always a new little detail to discover, along with the simple pleasure of just being there. But that was then and this is now and sadly it is no more.

Last week I posted photos from an old and traditional little shopping street that is just about holding on with only two shops still open for business. The incredible looking little arcade below, however, lost that battle quite some time ago.

With a small selection of stores to cover the daily needs of local residents, it was presumably both well used and an integral part of the community. That was back in the day though, and those days have sadly long gone, with the only sign of life being one of the former proprietors pottering around inside.

Last week I posted some recent, late summer night scenes shot in and around Shinjuku’s Kabukicho red light district, so as a companion series of sorts, here is a set of daytime photos from the same area and time period. Moments that just like those previous pictures, are quiet interludes amidst the crowds and general hullabaloo of the area. With their variety, colours and contrasts, they are also suitably reflective of this consistently fascinating part of the city, along with a couple of frames that offer more than just a hint of its famous, round the clock hedonism.

At the beginning of the year I posted a few photographs from this incredibly old and dated shopping street, but with better light on a recent return, I managed to capture more of what makes it so special.

There used to be a comparatively modern store at one end, but now even that has gone, leaving only the still popular tofu shop, along with the green tea place that remains more like a museum piece than an actual business. Nothing at all about the latter has changed in nearly 12 months. Probably the same goes for the last 12 years as well.

Yet busy or otherwise, they are all that’s left, with their former neighbours long since shuttered up. Only their slowly fading signs remain. All of which provides a fascinating glimpse of how local life and commerce once was before supermarkets, cars and convenience stores changed the landscape forever.