Food and Drink

Old school Japanese lunch spots rarely disappoint, and this lovely little eatery most definitely did not. It has been in business since 1968, with the same couple running it the whole time — a husband and wife team who are now 83 and 79 years old respectively. The man, as is common in such places, does the bulk of the cooking, while the woman serves and helps out with some dishes.

Situated in an area of southern Japan that has started to experience more overseas visitors, we talked to the lady about the changes that has brought, along with some of the challenges. A Japanese only menu not surprisingly makes things tricky at times, although increasingly accurate smartphone translations, along with food replicas on display outside, mean making and taking orders has been relatively stress free.

Those language barriers somewhat surprisingly made us the first foreign customers she’s actually had a conversation with, and being the only ones left as closing time approached, we had time to chat about all manner of things, including her having never visited Tokyo, and the ongoing unknown of how long they will stay open for.

A truly wonderful encounter that will live long in the memory, and all being well, the restaurant will continue to live on for as long as they want it to.

With Tokyo changing so rapidly, everyday scenes and moments feel increasingly important. Brief snippets of life (and lives once lived) that together seem to be the best way of capturing the often nebulous nature of the now. A now that possesses so much of the past, but due to those aforementioned changes, possibly very little of the future.

That perhaps isn’t the clearest of introductions, and likely I haven’t really got my idea across, but understandable or otherwise, here are the photos. Images that were all taken on a recent walk, and together make for a small series that may, or indeed may not, be greater than the sum of its parts.

Just like every city, Tokyo has its problems and regular irritations, but one of the capital’s many positive attributes is the sheer variety of sights and scenes it’s possible to see on a daily basis. These then are some moments and unique locations spotted on an unexpectedly less than warm meander during the middle of last week.

Over the last few months I’ve posted several series documenting old and dilapidated Japanese markets. Once busy locations that are now mostly shuttered — their time as functioning businesses rapidly running out.

This one, however, is very much a going concern, but due to its wonderfully dated signs and appealing colours, I opted to take most of my photographs both after dark and at the end of the working day. A choice that hopefully allows those key aspects to shine through, along with the solitary calm such places possess when most of the people have gone home.

Sometimes, some walks, offer up a pleasing array of scenes that one way or another fit nicely together. Often it’s colours, or certain themes, and every now and again, it’s a lovely combination of the two. A mix I got on this recent meander, when everything somehow sort of just worked out.

Shooting at night, or in the rain, isn’t the kind of photography I do a huge amount of. Manually focusing while holding an umbrella always makes the latter less appealing. The relative lack of the former, on the other hand, is harder to explain, except perhaps that when meandering around after dark, an old and character filled little bar can easily feel like the more enticing option.

This small series of images then was taken recently on one of my Tokyo Photowalk Tours, a walk that provided the perfect reason to be out and about when normally I wouldn’t have been. Designed to cover the quiet and busy, people versus no people, it proved to be a fun and varied combination. The resultant photographs also turned out quite pleasing, which will hopefully give me the requisite push to make similar walks a more regular part of my personal work.