Considering how tough life on Tokyo’s streets must be, with a bit of warmth from a weak sun possibly the only pleasure, it’s strangely touching to see the custom of taking off one’s shoes still continued.
Homeless habits
A saunter around Sugamo
It’s not unusual to see Buddhist priests offering prayers and accepting money outside stations or dotted about Tokyo’s streets, but from my experience at least, I have never seen anyone stood talking or receiving ‘treatment’ from them. Well, until a recent saunter around Sugamo that is.
Known as the Harajuku for old ladies, where the average age is about 107 and there’s more pushiness than at a pushing contest for the overly pushy, priests are not only present in noticeably larger numbers than normal, but they also appear to offer (literally) hands-on help with certain ailments — photographs of which I regrettably didn’t manage to get due to the just mentioned amounts of jostling.
I did, however, bag some pictures of a few priests in more communicative action.
The pair of them dealing with what, for want of a better description, looked like a load of old ladies lining up for confession.
Although what they were actually talking about, and whether this kind of thing is common, I really don’t know, but I’d certainly welcome any suggestions from somebody who does.
Double-decker dogs
With pushchairs for pampered pets in Tokyo not really all that rare, it presumably makes some kind of sense, if one has a couple of canines of course, to traipse them round in tandem.
Japanese fashion and phones
Even the briefest of walks around the likes of Shinjuku or Harajuku will produce a dazzling array of fashion along with an enormous number of phones. All of which are sported by similarly assorted age groups. Characteristics that in many ways could arguably be said to sum up Tokyo’s shopping and entertainment areas in a nutshell.
Or should that be a clamshell?
Imelda Marcos-like muddle
It’s usually good to have choice, but when it comes to not so stylish or unsubtly coloured plastic sandals-cum-slippers, it’s arguable that one can have a little too much of a good thing.
