Oh, Harro Again Shitamachi

More Shitamachi (old neighborhood) explorin' in tokyo.  Kanako aka "the okinawan" aka Emily Dudley took the day off work to accompany me.  this time we went around 

did you ever wonder how they cleaned those yellow blind people strips?  No?  thought they just cleaned it like normal didn't ya?

poor fellas.

delish.  i suspect because of my hair people have been talking to me a LOT more in Japan especially this time around.  met the owner of this croquette place because of comments about my hair.  this was only the beginning of hair related encounters for the day.

University of Tokyo

u of tokyo cafeteria, or one of many probably

being very japanese and pre-washing for them

u of tokyo still

Ueno park

more num nums.

we saw shoes kind of on display and an open door so we walked in and checked this place out and this guy came out and was like what are you doing in here, this isn't a store, this is my studio.  and were were like oh oh sorry dude, and he was said but wait i saw you guys before earlier today, i saw your hair, sit down and hang out for a while and look at my travel photos and studio.  so we all chatted, looked at his photos of india (which he shot with film, agfa film, and man nothing compares with film!!!), and talked about making shoes, etc...  all this equipment is so expensive and it takes him like months to make a pair of shoes cuz he does it right.  and its super expensive.  i will put up his website when i find his card after my asia trip sometime.

another example of sucessfull international diplomacy executed by this hair.

some famous japanese poets old house.

we went to this old timey sento.  outside this sento this guy started talking to us.  again i have a hunch that if i had a shaved head like in the past this conversation might not have happened.  so we were shooting the ish and then it turned out this guy was going to the sento too so that meant i had to keep talking to him while we scrubbed our balls and then soaked them in 26 C mineral water.  while i was sitting on my little stool scrubbing up he suddenly started scrubbing my back.  i was thinking um....  later on kanako said that in old neighborhoods if you're talking to someone at the sento its friendly to scrub their back.  was i supposed to reciprocate?  um...

only in japan would i let this man scrub my back.  "yea that's right, i scrubbed his back yea!"

some new beers to try whilst walking around taking night photos.

sometimes its worth it to carry around that tripod.  sometimes.

ochanomizu

old bling dudes got swagger

some JR station 

this is the first shot, by the time the 4th shot came around there was the old ramen cooking grandpa next to me trying to tell me something and then a shorter than me young checkered flag wearing goon next to me telling me "no photos, 1, 2, 3, photos ok because it's business time".  seriously his shirt was like made out of the checkered flag they wave at the end of a race.  he was standing like a baboon with his arms and chest all puffed out but was significantly shorter than me.  was he trying to be intimidating by reverting to the ways of a wild baboon or is that just his weird normal posture?  Kanako says maybe he was yakuza trying to protect their business.....a ramen stand, from being photographed, he must be the lowest on the totem pole.  normally i would protest but since i got 4 photos (in your face 1,2,3 photos!) i said ok dude.  oh and he asked where i was from and i said american and he shook my hand and said good, i like american.

tokyo somewhere under the moonlight.