Tag Archives: Window

Ginza

Tokyo, Japan. May 2014.

Sometimes we forget to be tourists in the places we live. Having visitors helps. On this occasion, we ventured into Ginza, headed for the Laduree Tea Room, but arrived too early and had to wait outside a bit before we could go in. The waiting was exceptional, as the day was clear and temperate and given to people-watching.

I took this photograph in the window of a department store. A line of brightly coloured pedestrians makes its way through the monochrome of sand-dune beach-brush, a black-and-white couple sits on steps imagined from the crosswalk zebra and a spectrum of silver sand spills out into the city streets under facades of glass and brick and the signage of the city while an icon of fashion turns the other cheek. Even as the spring becomes the summer, it’s all about the layers.

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The Bakery Window

Kamakura, Japan. April 2011.

One more bicycle before summer ends. I took this one a couple of years ago, meant to post it and never quite got around to it. It encapsulates something quintessentially Japan for me. It’s not a place of big supermarkets and concrete-block malls—there are big supermarkets, don’t get me wrong, but there is still very much a culture of locally owned shops and services. Instead of pulling the family SUV into the superstore lot, for the most part in Japan, you can pedal a bike to the bakery or the or the fruit seller and buy what you need put it in the handlebar basket and pedal home.
In spite of the surrounding metropolis, it seems to keep life on a livable scale.