Tokyo Times

Jan 23 2017 7 Comments

Tokyo: An internationally drunk city?

When it comes to helping overseas visitors, Tokyo has definitely made an effort over the years. Signs and announcements in foreign languages are now way more common than they once were, and similarly helpful menus can be found in an increasing number of restaurants. And yet at the same time, how much the capital really wants to be the international city it supposedly strives to be is difficult to say, as below a very fragile surface, Tokyo is arguably just as traditional as before.

For better or worse, however, some things are difficult to maintain, and when outsiders start perfectly replicating the behavior once dominated by inebriated Japanese salarymen, there’s probably no turning back.

Jan 20 2017 8 Comments

A 90-year-old Tokyo tatami shop

This one-room little workshop in an old part of Tokyo was founded just over 90 years ago. Producing handmade tatami (traditional Japanese flooring mats), it’s both a business and a part of the local community — opening, as it does, onto the area’s little shopping street.

Going back to those early years, tatami was ubiquitous in Japanese homes, so presumably it would have been a decent money earner. The situation would also have been very similar when the original owner passed it on to his grandson, the man in the photo below.

Now, however, tatami is nowhere near as common as it once was. Neither, it has to be said, are such traditional little businesses. Younger generations simply aren’t interested in running them. So when the grandson, who is now himself a grandad, finally calls it a day, the shutters will come down on another part of Tokyo’s past.

Jan 18 2017 8 Comments

A stark, striking-looking Tokyo mannequin

Most shop mannequins rarely warrant a second look, but the odd one or two quite inexplicably do.

Jan 16 2017 10 Comments

Street Buddhist stares and prayers

Regardless of whether it’s hot or cold, fine or otherwise, this old Buddhist monk is almost always stood in the same spot. A display of patience and commitment that is nothing short of incredible. He diligently prays. Rarely seems to receive offerings. And when unintentionally provoked by an impolite foreigner, the displeasure he showed was characteristically fleeting.

Jan 13 2017 8 Comments

Japan: A portrait of the artist as an old man?

Jan 11 2017 54 Comments

Abandoned American theme park in Japan: A warning?

Western Village first opened its doors back in the early 1970s. Originally quite a modest affair known as Kinugawa Family Ranch, the Wild West theme park did well and gradually expanded, hence the name change. Yet despite such success, changing times resulted in changing fortunes, and in 2006 it was forced to close — meaning that the park now sits empty and forlorn by the side of the road. An odd, wholly unexpected sight in a relatively sparsely populated area a few hours north of Tokyo.

Increasingly battered by the weather and years of neglect, it nonetheless still retains the look one would expect.

Visiting at the end of a politically tumultuous 2016, however, it wasn’t these out of place structures that made an impact. Instead, it was the park’s haunted looking residents and their unintended, yet no less terrifying depiction of a world turned utterly upside down. The world in which we currently live in, basically.

Considering its theme, and the period in which Western Village opened, it’s perhaps not surprising that one particular, distinctly larger-than-life personality was chosen to front it.

And, as a follicly challenged right winger with a weirdly orange complexion, such a choice seems disturbingly prescient.

So now, instead of an innocent recreation of all things cowboy-related, this celebrity led world feels like a truly disturbing vision of a potentially very near future. One in which the inner machinations and ulterior motives of those pulling the presidential strings are very much to the fore.

While those set to benefit blithely carry on — wilfully ignorant of the slow, piecemeal disintegration of everything they are supposed to stand for.

And such blatant disregard for procedure and accountability is cynically carried out while the masses are kept mostly in the dark by complicit organisations happy — or at the very least content — to peddle untruths and create distractions.