Nishi Nippori Tour

Went to Nishi Nippori, which is a shitamachi neighborhood (old town). pretty nice day.

grossness

grossness. this is a common look here. you should have seen her face, more grossness, its cropped so you might not be able to tell but she is wearing one of those french hats too.

huge cemetery next to Kyodo station. from the 2nd floor recycle bike shop. used bikes are super hard to find here. i finally found a used bike shop and they were all pretty expensive, mostly racing bikes and cool guy bikes. i think they are mostly "fixed gear" bikes, only 1 gear and look like racing bikes. i dont know anything about bikes though.

she probably doesnt know what this means, i dont even know what it means.

this guy was funny. he laughed a lot and kept periodically zipping and unzipping his shirt neck. he is also like 6'2" and super skinny so it adds to his cartoon characterness. this was at a bar with Shintaro and his buddies. the beer at this place in Shinjuku called "Alps" is only 180 yen ($2)!!!

and so are the highballs! highballs are popular here. anyway i love the illustrations they used for this campaign..

Ok here we go the start of Nishi Nippori. I looked at the area map outside the station and there were something like 20 temples all next to each other pretty much so i climbed the hilly street to take a stroll. I dont know how to say this in japanese but in chinese its An Quan, just like my yellow saftey hat says, and there are demented looking kids on it so its probably about watching out for kids safety.

first temple, i hear a horrible noise coming from under this coin collecting box

and wat was it? a super ting goiter of a kitten. this thing would not shut up the whole time. But it was at a temple so i did not smite it, gorillas have that much respect at least.

wat the heck is this? havent seen this before.

temple areas are always heavily tree'd so it gets a little dark in some corners so this guy looked pretty freaky with his mouth painted red and white eyeballs peering out of the shady corner of this temple.

are these Jizo? i've seen little jizo that are the protectors of childen and travellers and also represent dead children or something but not sure about these.

old school buckets were at all the temples.

cemetery sticks poking over the top of this wall. don't know what the sticks are yet

japanese love hawaii. there are a ton of japanese people who live in hawaii. this is a "school of hula" and it looked like it really was cuz i saw a huge mirror-ed room with mats on the floor.

dog getting the latest stylin'

i was delighted to find this street at the end of the sunset. lots of cool little shops and tons of delishious looking food.

i liked the stacked up daruma dolls on the right and the round girls on the left. the lady told me i could taked fotos but i pretended not to hear her and took it anyway. but japan has turned me into a little pansie so i didnt take anymore. i even wait for 3 minutes with the ocean of other people at the crosswalk and don't cross the street whenever i want. wats happening to me. pretty soon i will be saying sorry for everything and bowing all the time.

on the left are huuuuge chicken katsu fried cutlets for 190 yen ($2). i would love to slam my face into any of the trays here.

random shrines? temples? in a lot of places. i would see people stop for a second and do their prayer things and walk on.

if you didn't know the swashtika is a symbol of good luck or soemthing here, and isn't it in other cultures too like in africa?

this is actually a gallery not a bathhouse.

The construction cones at night here make it look like summer fiesta time.

could they make this look any creepier and less assuring at night time when you are a female and you have to go all the way to the back to get your bike?

and strangely there was this store on the right that had an extreme gree/yellow glow to it too.

huge pachinko parlor at Nippori not to be confused with Nishi Nippori

somewhere on the hill above Nippori station

a long 5 block stretch of this road was cemetery, who knows how far it stretched on either side. wonder if japanese people get freaked out like we would or if their culture feels differently about cemeteries

this seemed to be in sync with the crosswalk signal at this T intersection near Ueno park. Its gotta be an art installment cuz it would be the biggest crosswalk light in the world if its not. and by the time you deciphered the weird code and you find out it actually says don't cross you would be dead.

the JR Ueno station, a maze of walkways and tunnels. lots of homeless people and vagabonds.

also the JR Ueno station.

shibuya. comedy show being filmed. huge glass windows so passers by can watch on the street. sound proof though it seemed.