Ginzaline

September 23, 2015

Crackle and Pop

Dusk fades fast with this change of season. Two women chat on the street ahead of you outside a glowing shopfront, next door to a heavy office block. The woman in the apron appears to live at the shop. You look in as you pass. Sembei, she tells you. Rice crackers. A middle-age man in…

August 25, 2015

New Boots

Shoemaker Masahiko Harada looks up through the open doorway against the daylight. He is glueing some leather. He wears an apron, a loose white T-shirt, and what appear to be two different shoes with one sock. And what seems like a permanent expression of surprise. Yes do come in, he says, Yes, try some on!…

July 13, 2015

Golden Bat Theatre

The world is in trouble this sunny Sunday afternoon near Sensoji temple. But it’s nothing the goofy superhero Golden Bat can’t fix. Entertainer Akio Narasawa, whose stage name is Gengorou, narrates this struggle of good and evil through the proscenium-arch frame he has mounted on his bicycle, sliding the storybook cards in and out as…

July 8, 2015

The City Dances

You don’t know any steps, so when Yoko Inamoto of antique store Hotaru-do tells you she’s rehearsing for the bon-odori in Iriya Minami park and you should come on the night, you turn up as a spectator. But as the drumbeats start and the neighbourhood young and old begin to welcome back their spirits of…

June 29, 2015

Smartball Rosemary

The fluorescent pink cherry blossoms look as if they hang here all year round. This may be because at Rosemary, Tokyo’s only remaining Smartball parlour, the mood is eternally Spring. People come to revisit their youth, or bring their grandchildren to play. Local kids gather on their own. Families form crowds around one or two…

June 24, 2015

Walk-in Book

Art bookstore owner Yoshiyuki Morioka wonders about the English name of the shop which he opened last month. Is it strange, he says, to say, “A single room with a single book”? Wouldn’t it have been better to say, “One book, one room”? It doesn’t matter. The concept is brilliant. A single title is the…

June 22, 2015

Painted Words

Specialist stores have their own calm. Inside is shaded and cool, they never try too hard to please. No loud displays or big sales push. Sometimes walking past them, you wouldn’t even know they are there. Like on this rainy-season afternoon in the backstreets of Kotobuki. A scholarly-looking Chinese fellow with his wife and kids…

June 16, 2015

Strange Addiction

There’s a well-appointed bathhouse minutes from home so it says something about the odd magic of the more distant Okubo Yu that, when you feel like mixing with people and having a soak, you end up here, at the back of Kappabashi, at this faded place. It’s certainly no-frills. The room, though repainted since this…

May 6, 2015

Chicken Man of Senzoku

The little crowd of customers outside Takematsu Chicken Shop is a good sign, on Golden Week holiday, along this shuttered stretch of Senzoku-dori, toward Yoshiwara, north of Sensoji. The late afternoon sun burns into the awning. It’s near closing time. Watch your feet please, says one of the staff. You step aside, and the employee…

April 22, 2015

Rings and Cycle

At Fuji Ramen, as you hand back your empty noodle bowl, Kosuke the shop-master says, I’m closing next Sunday. I’m getting married at Asakusa Jinja, in traditional style, my bride and I are even riding in a rickshaw for photos. Well, well! you say. Congratulations! Asakusa Shrine, huh. That should make for some spectacle. Sunday…