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The Graduates

 There’s the air of party around the graduation show at Tokyo University of the Arts, or Geidai. As if everyone knows how everybody knows that this moment is never to be repeated. Never to be repeated. After all, when else might they feel such imminence, as they prepare to leave behind their luxuries, the time…

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Heaven for Leather

 Yuichiro Murakami’s wrinkly leather slippers hug your feet like snug old socks, or an extra layer of skin, and you don’t want to take them off, so it’s a good thing you bought them, isn’t it, these good-feeling things, good-smelling, intelligently thought-out and practical, like the other stuff he makes. The shop in Kuramae is…

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Uogashi Sushi Has Closed

 You stand and stare, a bit slow and disbelieving in front of the lowered roller shutter. Click your tongue, run a checklist: you’re at the correct block and building in Asakusa – check; he’s not off on holidays – check; he’s not renovating – check; you’re not in a parallel universe that happens to be missing…

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Your Health is Number One

 Near the corner of Senzoku and Kototoi you come across furniture shop Eishu Koeki-sha, with its glass owls, crystal balls, samurai armour, wooden carved gods, scroll paintings and a moon-shaped shelf, which you end up buying, because shopowner Junko Tsukiyama is a sharp saleswoman and tells you since it is a bit scuffed, as she…

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Cash and Carry

 This is service with a smile. You pick out a couple of inexpensive items at the two-day antique stall in the foyer of hostel Nui on this Coming-of-Age weekend, including some battered cedar drawers held together with what appear to be wooden nails, light but a bit awkward to lug, and stallholder Kazutoshi Shimada of Waplus,…

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San’ya Live

 Early on New Year’s Eve you head out to see a benefit concert by the Showa-era trio Tokyo Taishuu Kayou Gakudan, Tokyo Popular Song Ensemble, in a park in the day-labourers’ district of San’ya, and you’re late so you jump in a taxi, and on your way the woman driver cackles as she gives you…

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Shooting Gallery (Event)

 You didn’t go around Kuramae on this year’s first Saturday expecting to find First Saturday, did you, because of course you know First Saturday this month is January 11. By the river at the occasional gallery and photographers’ space Kawauso, you can play shooting arcade with pop guns and targets by Jiro Yoshida, which may…

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1.1.14

 HAPPY NEW YEAR love, Ginzaline Thanks for reading! People queue along the Nakamise open arcade in front of Sensoji to make their first prayers of 2014. The temple in Asakusa dedicated to the goddess of mercy sees an average two-million visitors over the first three days of New Year.

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The Aquarium

 (Excerpted from The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa by Yasunari Kawabata) Asakusa is Tokyo’s heart… Asakusa is a human market… The words of that popular writer Soeda Azenbou: Asakusa is Asakusa for everyone. In Asakusa, everything is flung out in the raw. Desires dance naked. All races, all classes, all jumbled together forming a bottomless, endless…

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Furnished Sweet

 Toru Shimizu is Monokraft. He designs furniture for you. Well maybe not you specifically, not you just yet. Because this is furniture for life, and maybe you’re still not quite settled. Plus maybe it’s a little expensive. But then, the design is classic, simple, and with flair. You can see it beautifully on his website.…

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