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Rain Dub and Shine

 Dinner is takeout tonight. It’s no more than a ride downstairs in the lift, a minute’s walk in the misting rain to the Rastaman Cafe, and about two spoken sentences. Plump Take-chan waves from behind the bar counter when he sees you. He steps out to the Weber barbecue by the front door, under the…

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Tea Men

 Traditions fade, and sometimes revive. Making a cup of tea used to be a foreign activity for Jun Fujii, of Nakamura Tea Life Store. He never owned a teapot. I drank tea only from PET bottles, or I drank canned coffee. I think I was a typical young single guy, he says. Now he wants…

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Floating World

 Walk these backstreets, you’ll see things. Here comes a local-looking fellow lighting a cigarette. Well I’ll be. What’d you call this then? A bamboo boat? He takes it in, from a couple of angles. It’s not bamboo, he says. It’s reeds. He looks you up and down. So what do you do then, walk around…

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The Argument Settler

 Multi-kilogram kimono like this donja helped families of Aomori, northern Japan, survive deadly winters. They may even have preserved the family unit. Donja like this would have evolved over a century, with four generations of a household maintaining, modifying, and adding to it. A joke went that the best donja stayed standing when you took…

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Brushwork

 On the approach to the Kototoi Bridge, surrounded by bristles, Seitaro Ouchi and his son Kiyotake take it in turns to staff the tiny Marble brush shop (they have another, even smaller, store close to Sensoji). Have a look at this, says Seitaro, who is 86. I call this the Dustrich! It’s a feather duster…

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Last Dance

 Yep, these are all we have left. No big sizes. We’re shutting down at the end of this month. We’ve been in business for 70 years. Our craftsmen in Saitama are in their 80s. You can’t get anyone to take over, even if you advertise. What’s that? Am I the boss? Oh no, that’s Imoto.…

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Grinder Man

 You need only walk past here to sense the seriousness of purpose at Base Camp. There’s Mr Tezuka, unsmiling in the window. Running his machines. Few customers at the tables out the back. The shopping street, Satake Shotengai, near-deserted. You never go in. Maybe it seems like a place for drip-coffee maniacs. But today is…

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New Green Day

 Got five minutes? Hayashi the seal-maker waves you in as you pass his store after lunch at Fuji Ramen. A quick raking motion with the fingers of his raised hand. Please sit down he says. He disappears for a couple of minutes and you hear a whisking sound. He returns with a bowl of frothy matcha and some traditional youkan confection on a square dish. Hatsu-kama, he says. First tea ceremony of the new year. My father taught me to do this for customers. It stops mamono, bad things, from attaching to you. The yokan is chestnuts and sugar, he says. Nothing added. From Obuse, in Nagano. Under the Tokugawa…

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Trash and Treasure

 Masaki Yoshida wants to sell you something. He’s pushy in a good way. Come in come in, he says, holding open the door to Koga, his tiny curio store. It’s cold out there. Then he leaves you alone to look around. There’s not much you can do apart from stand here. Swing your arms and…

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Heart, Brain, Heart, Brain

 At Sensoji temple, the priests have shifted the incense cauldron to the side of the main approach, to make room for the New Year’s crowds. You waft the healing smoke over your afflicted parts, that’s the idea. Leave the rest to Kannon, Goddess of Mercy. Everyone loves this ritual. There’s a big crush at the…

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