Posts Tagged: Senzoku

This beautiful man…

Look at this unconventionally beautiful man, and what he was willing to share with my wife. She and I were at a festival at the Ohtori Shrine in Asakusa on a Tuesday…

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To this man we were strangers, foreigners to him, and that mattered for nothing. When I asked to take his picture, he agreed. Then he saw my wife and insisted she borrow his shimekazari so that I could take a picture of her holding it…

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The Japanese are often the most warm, generous people you will ever meet. And because of this man, that day in the Asakusa sun with my wife was one of my best days in Tokyo or anywhere ever.

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(Asakusa 4-chome, Tokyo 2015)

Rooster hawkers

Anpanman on the job

On a warm November day in Asakusa, street vendors were out in the Senzoku district selling food and souvenir items during the Tori no Ichi (rooster) fair hosted by the nearby Ohtori Shrine. Among the vendors was Anpanman, and his human sidekick, keeping passersby safe from hunger when they stopped to sample his wares…

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(Asakusa 4-chome, Tokyo 2015)

Old birds

They moved and talked the way old Japanese ladies often do, a bit hunched over but with animation and purpose. The sidewalk was crowded with people, most of them heading to a nearby Asakusa shrine for a ‘rooster’ day street market fair. But these ladies kept walking and talking, focused on intently each other, protected by that particularly Japanese force field which prevents anyone on a Tokyo sidewalk from getting in their way.

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(Asakusa, Tokyo 2015)