When it’s busy at work and not being bothered is a priority, wearing a hoodie and wielding a massive knife would appear to be a worryingly good move.
Photography
Tokyo smartphone looks
Usual, and yet nicely unusual.
Traditional Tokyo shoemaker
With so much stuff now mass produced and made elsewhere, the sight of someone actually making leather shoes by hand is really quite striking. Entering the tiny workshop also felt like stepping back in time, and in some ways it was, as the shoemaker’s grandfather started the business way back in the mid-1930s. But, like so many other old school setups, when the current owner finally decides to call it a day, the decision will also put an end to all that history.
Japanese dreams of colour?
Drunk Japanese in a grubby dive bar
After a long, all-day walk, nothing beats the discovery of a grubby little dive bar to relax and drink in. And it’s even better when said establishment immediately accepts you as an honorary local, while the whole time the real locals loll about drunk despite it still being early doors on a Monday.
Factors that basically made it the perfect place for a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
One which involved comically pronounced coarseness in English. At table, rather than in toilet, vomiting. Plus perhaps most surprising of all, a perplexing marriage proposal of sorts.
Then, a good few hours after arriving, everyone stumbled out. All soothed by the booze consumed, along with equally reassuring feeling that they’d be there again the following day to do it all over again.
