Food and Drink

A couple of years or so ago I took the first photograph. The scene really appealed, but as some customers turned up I didn’t get a chance to speak. Only a picture.

Returning last week, I was pleased to see the shop still there. The last of two businesses in a little alleyway that must have once been quite busy. And yet that said, it was both lovely and a little surprising to see a steady stream of youngsters turning up with their parents or grandparents. Many of the latter likely reliving their childhood days, as remarkably the shop has been in operation for 74 years. Even more incredible is that the owner has been there the whole time, and remains there undeterred at 94. A man who despite his age, and dealing with the public everyday, is quiet, and endearingly really quite shy.

The best days of this old Tokyo shopping street are long gone. Back in the 1950s and 60s it was a bustling thoroughfare at the heart of the community, whereas these days it’s half shuttered up and a shiny new supermarket, which a whole host of buildings were demolished for, will likely cause even more closures.

None of which, it has to be said, takes anything away from its unique and faded charm, so below are some of the people I’ve photographed along it. A mixture of business owners and local shoppers — some taken many years ago, with others very recent. Only one is an image that’s arguably strong enough to work by itself, but as a set I feel they do tell something of a story. A little snapshot over time of the life of the street, along with the lives that have made it so special.

There are a lot of photos on these pages of Tokyo bars, homes and buildings that have disappeared forever. The city changes at a ferocious pace, and rightly or wrongly, there’s generally little time for sentiment. Old places are to be demolished. It mostly seems as simple as that.

All that said, Tokyo is a truly sprawling metropolis, meaning that while much is gone, a massive amount still remains. Like the fried food and meat shop below.

Five years have passed between the photos, with the evening one taken just recently. However, while the time of day might have been different, the building, food and even the suspicious stare, remain reassuringly the same.

Tokyo may well be blessed with an incredible train network that crisscrosses the metropolis, but the city is also surprisingly walkable, so on good days, meanders between specific locales have a lovely habit of conjuring up more surprises than the main destination. Such walks also provide the option of popping into a local neighbourhood eatery, and for the time being at least, that can very often mean an old school machi chuka. A type of Japanese-style Chinese restaurant that was ubiquitous in the post-war period, but the with the owners of such places invariably getting on in years to say the least, they are slowly disappearing.

While they last, however, they are places frequented by all kinds of people. Somewhere anyone can feel comfortable due to their relaxed, down to earth ambience. A sort of home from home feeling that is further added to by the fact that looks-wise, and despite many decades in business, many of them haven’t changed much at all. And with those elements in mind, this little glimpse of one such place ticks all the requisite boxes. For starters there’s the older couple with the man doing almost all the cooking. Then it’s also patched up with tape, the decor and menu haven’t been altered since inception, and perhaps most of all, there’s the pretty much standard, and now beautifully faded, red counter. A little sanctuary that, like the vast majority of such restaurants, is as full of soul as the food that’s served.

There are no shortage of Tokyo bars and homes on these pages that have sadly ceased to exist, and whether it be the emptiness of the building left behind, or its complete demolition, they never fail to have an impact, no matter how inevitable such changes always are. The lovely little bar below, on the other hand, is a slightly different story. Or at least I’m pretty sure it is, and so that’s the version I’m content to go along with.

A friend and I drank there in 2019, and the mama-san was happy to serve us drinks and cook whatever was in her fridge. Her house next door fridge that is, as after nearly 45 years in operation, there wasn’t much of a business left. Instead, it was more just a place where you were cheerfully served if you turned up, but if nobody did, it quite clearly didn’t matter in the slightest. A situation very much like this bar once run by a 93-year-old.

And so we had a few beers, a bit of food was rustled up, and it was a genuinely fun experience. But then, some time between our visit and the end of the following year, the bar was demolished, along with the house next door.

In their place, however, is now a shiny new home. One in which the mama-san lives, as I’m fairly sure I saw her through the window.

The vast majority of my photos tend to be taken in the older, eastern areas of Tokyo. Places that in many respects are a world away from the usual image of the city, and yet at the same time they are just as much (if indeed not more) a part of the capital as the bright lights and bustling streets it’s more famous for. The one exception, however, has been Shinjuku. An area that despite its changes and my shifting interests, has remained a firm favourite.

Being a popular entertainment hub, Shinjuku has no shortage of fancy shops and the like, but there’s also so much more. It’s intimate as well as crowded, rough and ready but also refined, plus more than anything, it’s simply interesting, with similarly interesting people. A location that has also been more on my mind of late, as the photobook my friend Giovanni and I recently released (now available to buy here), contains half a dozen photos I took there over the years. Hence this post with those six pictures included.

The book is a visual conversation, so the images were chosen as a response to the previous photo rather than simply picking out some favourites like I’ve done here. The former was often incredibly difficult, but somewhat surprisingly, so was whittling down a set from the many Shinjuku pictures I have. Below then are the ones I settled on. Some inclusions I’ll no doubt question the moment this is posted, along with likely failing to understand why I left one or two others out. But either way, as a whole I still feel they represent a part of Tokyo that has changed enormously, and yet at the same time has barely changed at all.