Posts Tagged: Nakano-ku
25 Days in Tokyo—3: Freedom
In late October, 2015, I was in Tokyo, Japan for 25 days. I shot many photographs, and this series presents the most interesting, compelling, or touching scene I saw each day I was there. Click here to see the previous entries in this series.
The first three days I was in Tokyo in 2015, I didn’t wander around the city much. I was getting over jetlag, and a cold I brought with me from California. So I stuck to destinations within about 10 minutes walking distance from the apartment I was renting in Nakano-ku. Fortunately, that restriction encompassed a fantastic little bar called Freedom that I accidentally discovered near a park in September, 2013.
As the exterior shows, it’s a run-down little place. But Mama-san, on the left, and her customer, who was a regular I’d seen before in 2013, treated me with humor, warmth, and respect, despite the fact that, as usual, my Japanese was so bad the three of us really couldn’t talk to each other much…
(Nakano 5-chome, Tokyo 2015)
Tokyo laundromatters
When I travel to Tokyo I stay in an apartment building in Nakano 5-chome. There’s a small laundromat a five minute walk away that’s not only convenient for quickly doing several loads of wash, but is also on occasion a great place to photograph people…
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(Nakano 5-chome, Tokyo 2015)
Agitated schoolboy
It was a dark morning in Tokyo and had been raining for most of the night. On my way to a Ministop convenience store to buy some natto maki and an egg salad sandwich for breakfast, I spotted this kid who was dragging a huge cooler through the rainy streets.
We were headed the same way so I ended up following him for several hundred yards. Pulling the cooler while juggling the umbrella and huge shoulder bag made the kid stop a few times to redistribute and manage his burdens. Finally while passing a small park he stopped long enough for me to take his picture. I was also going to offer to help him schlep the cooler to wherever he was going.
But when he saw me as I snapped this photograph he barked a string of Japanese words which included “no way” and “foreigner”, and I knew immediately that there was no point in trying to offer my help.
(Hydrangea Park, Nakano, Tokyo 2015)
She wasn’t happy…
…about having to walk by a parked delivery truck on a frequently-used residential street in Nakano 5-chome. But the driver couldn’t move because his delivery was where he had parked, and she was kind of a fussy old bitch about it, so my sympathies aligned with the working man.
(Nakano 5-chome, Tokyo 2015)