Tokyo seems to be constantly changing, but the transformation this old lady must have seen is almost unimaginable.
Tokyo east meets western
A crumbling and crooked old Tokyo restaurant
Crooked and crumbling old shops and restaurants are thankfully not a rarity in Tokyo, but as wonderfully ramshackle as some of them are, the one below definitely takes some beating.
In business for 60 years or so, it’s clearly comfortable in its discolourations and the almost comedic toll those decades have taken. The mesmerising combination of which made sitting down for a leisurely lunch all the more memorable.
Of course how much longer it will last is hard to say, but for now at least it’s still there. There to marvel at of course, but more than anything, there to just simply enjoy.
Steely Tokyo life and light
On a drab and overcast suburban day, there was a brief, very welcome bright spell, transforming what would have been a mostly grey scene into something quite different.
Old Tokyo and some of the city’s youngest citizens
The plan was to find some of Tokyo’s past, but I ended up photographing its future.
An abandoned Japanese apartment complex in the mountains
Head out of the city and into the Japanese countryside, and apartment buildings become fairly scarce, so to not only find a small complex in the mountains, but one that has been abandoned for decades, was a surprise to say the least. In the past, similar locales have revealed a long lost village, hamlet and former forestry settlement — each full of old houses that didn’t look especially out of place in their surroundings. Yet as incongruous as they were, the apartments below were still comparable in the sense that they were also based around employment, with the mostly self-contained blocks once home to cement company workers relocated to the area.
With nice views and the convenience of shops on the premises, it must have been a relatively nice place to live — at least in the warmer months anyway. Winter, on the other hand, can’t have been much fun at all, as protection from the cold, especially in the more traditional rooms, was minimal at best. That said, any worries about the weather are now utterly irrelevant, as the whole place has been abandoned since the late 1970s. Forty years or so that has seen the elements take an incredible toll on the buildings, and the individual apartments in particular, leaving only stark reminders of what was, and what eventually will always be.
