Apart from its western extremities, Tokyo is a grey, concrete covered sprawl. A sprawl that sometimes seems like it never ends. But travel south of the city and take a short ferry ride across the Uraga Channel, and it’s a very different world indeed. A difference that is beautifully clear from the top of Nokogiriyama, or Saw Mountain.
A window into another Tokyo world
A Tokyo that’s older, more traditional, and possibly a lot poorer.
Pole dancers, robots and illuminated tanks
The Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho red light district is an experience like no other. An audio and visual extravaganza so mindbogglingly bonkers it’s almost impossible to describe. As such, images, and even video, don’t really do the experience justice.
So sadly these photographs only offer a mere hint of what the performance entails. And, like the title suggests, there are pole dancers.
Illuminated tanks.
An equally luminous aeroplane.
The odd form of rather tamer transportation.
And oh yeah, the occasional robot.
Tokyo standing bar beers
Japanese standing bars like the one below tend to differ from their far more common, chair-based cousins, in that they force complete strangers to drink together.
But just like weddings, work parties and other formal affairs, the conversations still don’t really flow until the booze does.
Massive anime head madness
A quick search suggests that this particular style is called Animegao. And those who indulge in it are apparently dollers. But regardless of how correct that may or may not be, what is for definite is that it makes for a wonderfully odd sight.
Dodging the shadows
Dodging the shadows — for now…