Photography

With its vast population and famous entertainment hubs, Tokyo is as loud, busy and frantic as one would imagine. It is also quite the opposite.

Move from those well known areas, or find some of their tucked away little secrets, and the city can be a very different place. A metropolis that is calm, quiet and sometimes even serene. Below then are some examples of that, all taken in the last couple of weeks when on long wanders or photowalks with customers. Moments captured in places ranging from those aforementioned central districts, to the capital’s western suburbs, with each and every location feeling like a completely separate world.

With its bright colours and friendly owners, this old Tokyo vegetable shop is a treat in itself, but the unusual addition of a still treasured 1980s Honda Gold Wing makes it even more special.

The business has been in operation for 60 years, and that unexpected motorbike was purchased around 1990 for the far from insubstantial sum of 4 million yen. A clearly much loved machine that is now only taken out on rare occasions, although it is started most days to keep it ticking over. Something its owner clearly enjoys doing, so to witness that simple little routine was absolutely lovely.

I’ve photographed this wonderfully old and dated Tokyo shopping arcade before, and the last frame in this series is from my first visit several years ago. However, with Tokyo changing so fast, heading back and spending a bit more time there felt like a must. These new shots then (along with that aforementioned earlier one) are the results of a recent visit. I spent about half an hour there, the bulk of that time waiting for people to pass through, as perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not exactly the busiest of places.

Best of all though was seeing and chatting to the old lady setting up her little bar for the day. Now in her 80s, she’s still running the business she opened back when the arcade was built in the mid 1970s. Looking at the area now, the changes she must have seen are hard to grasp, and yet at the same time, in regards to her day to day life, nothing much seems to have changed at all.

After many years here I’d like to think I know Tokyo fairly well, but with the Japanese capital being so sprawling and vast, it’s really only possible to know parts of it. Even then, turning a previously unseen corner can result in new discoveries, and the market below is one such example, as unbeknownst to me until recently, it’s not far at all from where I live.

It has been operational since 1963, and back then, with all the stalls open for business, it must have been a genuinely bustling little spot. Nowadays, however, it’s quite a different story, with only a few surviving places and a lot of it long shuttered up. The combination of which makes it a fascinating place to see and photograph. A small slice of the past that’s still just about surviving in the present.