10 Views of Tokyo
Join me to view an entertainment district in Tokyo from above—an ad-hoc collage of the streets of Tokyo reveals the daily life of passersby.
We arrived at our apartment in the evening, quickly discovering it was deep into an entertainment district. The reviews said that department could be a little noisy at night, but we were more than a little dismayed to see that was because it was above not one, but two different hostess bars.
Even so, the location had its charms. The apartment was on the top floor, so the height meant street noise was pretty minimized. The hostess bars weren’t nearly so rowdy as we expected. And the view was mesmerizing. I couldn’t help but photograph it. I took images that I knew I could roughly combine into a collage, giving a rough feel for how the view felt.
The architecture of Tokyo is designed to optimize sunlight. The rooftops of buildings over a certain height are sloped to prevent shading the streets below them. Streets filled with people.
(My hobby, whenever I have a view of a Tokyo skyline, is to count the bright blue beacons of Toyoko Inns, a popular chain of business hotels across Japan. Tokyo is lousy with them: my record is twelve. This view offered exactly one, clearly visible even during the day.)
Despite its status as an entertainment district catering to the needs and desires of tired, hungry, and bored salarymen, this part of the city was also just a neighborhood. Schoolchildren walk to the train station in the morning, elderly couples meander towards errands after breakfast, everyone comes out for lunch.
Colophon
Images captured with a Mamiya RB67 Pro SD with Mamiya Sekor K/L 90mm f/3.5 lens on Ilford FP4 plus developed in Adox XT-3 1+1.
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