It’s easy to get lost in this sprawling city as you wander through neighborhoods and business districts. Still, I was determined to walk through this city with feet firmly fixed to the ground, looking around the small streets and wide boulevards seeking out what makes Tokyo, Tokyo.
This particular approach to travel is a bit unusual in the age of finding somekind of unique place and then publicizing it all over social media. My waanderings, instead, were meant to find anything per se. They were a way to be a part of the physical environment and along the way find images that captured my particular attention. On these days, I was drawn to the many alleys and small spaces that are everywhere in this city (and many others around the world). So many small places tell us something about the people who live in this metropolis.
In most alleys in the city, you don’t find people. They are spaces that are representative of lived places without people actually present. I guess that’s not surprising; alleys are often places people pass by and occasionally go through.
In most cases, as I walked past alleys, I found people doing some form of labor. Cleaning, hauling, tossing trash, or working on some aspect of dail life. These moments were sometimes fleeting, and I often missed the photo as a group of workers (almost always men) were moving through the place.
Some alleys offered access to businesses and homes, and, in mamy cases, both. Storage containers were often part of these locations and plastic “milk crates” or cans filled with all kinds of material sat along these tiny thoroughfares.
Still other alleys weren’t alleys at all, but tiny streets filled with people going from place to place. These small walkways were fascinating in the amount of people and shops that filled the spaces. In some ways, they were more populated than main streets all over Japan.
In some places, an alley was the home to vehicles of all kinds. Cars, motorbikes, and bicycles. In small towns outside of Tokyo, I found vehicles in alleys most common.
Many alleys in Japan start with small trinkets or ceramic objects. Most common were small hedgehogs in a kind of human-form. These various objects were almost always at the entrance to an alley.
These street and alley scenes in Tokyo offered a glimpse at less obvious characteristics of this city. I found in these places a kind of authentic view of life in the city. In these places, I found something about Tokyo that I didn’t find in the historic sites and more tourist-centric places in the city. At the same time, I’m not valuing one part of the city obver another; I just found something equally interesting and scenic in this huge metropolis. I also found that even in a place that is so huge, small spaces dominate and make up the physical structure of the city. Maybe it’s in these alleys that Tokyo lives ad breathes.
May you be happy, may you be well.
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