Shitamachi scenes - a walk through Nezu and Hongo

Those of you who know me well know that I love Tokyo's modern heart - the skyscrapers, malls and galleries, all steel and glass brutalism. But sometimes it's fun to hang out in the older areas or shitamachi (下町 - downtown) to see a different side of the city.








We have the greyest population on the planet, and it's in dowtown districts like Nezu and Hongo that you really get a sense of that.


I love this photo. but it makes me want to cry a little when I look at it. The Japanese economic miracle and the rise of the corporate samurai in the seventies led to the disintegration of the traditional family unit. Time was, older generations here were cared for through the extended family and revered under Confucian principles. But now, old couples like these generally see their families only once in a while, if at all, and are mostly left to fend for themselves.

You can see how people REALLY live on top of each other here in downtown. I mean the population density is ridiculous in the centre of Tokyo too, but here you could reach out your bedroom window and click snooze on your neighbour's alarm clock.


And no matter where you go in Tokyo, you'll see that we're all being cooked by the cables and power lines swirling over out heads most of the time.


Living in this city you develop great blinkered vision: you have to focus on all the beauty peeking out from behind the ugly. That's probably why I’m forever taking photos of the plants and trees that I walk past. Like this roadside orange:


or these roadside berries:

I should make a coffee table book, "Surviving the roadside - a photographic guide to Tokyo's wild plants" or something. I could end up like J.R. Hartely, a defeated old man searching in vain for my work.

One huge advantage of downtown is the large number of cheap, traditional stores. I passed this sweet potato shop. Just look at all that yumminess. My favourites are the wee sweet potato pies, so guess what I had when I returned home.




Blossom watch continues apace. This was my first official cherry blossom: a hardy mountain cherry - not the later-blooming someiyoshino (ソメイヨシノ) - but a sakura nonetheless.



And then this was a very sweet smelling plum varitety.


I overheard two old dears calling it a robai (蝋梅), which the dictionary translates as Calycanthaceae, if you want to research that, Mam.

And finally a Fraggle-esque shout out to my mother, the Great Trash Heap: look, real-live Doozers!



Oh yeah, and especially for my sister, here is the mild-mannered guard dog at one of Nezu's many temples.