Small Tokyo bar, big friendly smile
This fella’s bar might well be small, with an open window having to double as a service hatch of sorts for the few seats outside. But, what clearly isn’t lacking in size is his big, welcoming smile.
Not to mention his equally large, and similarly smile-inducing, drinks.
Unique Japanese office space after artists take over
Japanese offices generally aren’t the most inspiring of places, with conservatism and practicality the overriding themes. Work is what’s to be done there, so that’s their sole, and thus soulless, role. No startup-like table tennis tables or soft seating — just desks, chairs and drab surroundings.
However, when such spaces are emptied due to a building’s planned demolition, and a bunch of young artists are let loose inside, things can be really quite different.
So much so in fact that it’s almost impossible to imagine the more than likely banal, day-to-day drudgery that once went on there.
Instead there is now brightness.
Colour.
Imagination.
Plus a real feeling of space.
And perhaps more than anything, a genuine sense of escape.
Young Japanese woman in a dirty Tokyo alley
When working in a seedy part of the city, it would appear that cigarette breaks aren’t necessarily much of an escape. Or at least that’s certainly the case in this passageway, as the smoker below is the second young woman I’ve photographed there. The first, should you have a similar soft spot for such squalor, can be seen here.
The dude?
Or at least a Japanese dude?
Tokyo’s oldest and weariest shop owner?
The sight of people way past retirement age still working isn’t an uncommon one in Japan. In fact it isn’t even unusual on the pages of Tokyo Times. There’s a shoemaker still plying his trade in a wonderfully archaic workshop. A long since ex-French chef still cooking up a storm. Plus another septuagenarian bar owner in no way ready to put her feet up just yet. But as old as those people are, they act nothing like their years, energetically going about their business in the manner of someone much, much younger.
This woman, however, is a different story altogether. Admittedly she may not be the oldest. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. But it would be difficult to find a shop owner looking any more world-weary.