Sublime

Tokyo to visit Rokuyosha, a…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

No breathing room between the buildings, which means unagi restaurants rubbing shoulders with telephone clubs, and estate agents sharing walls with sex shops. Busy electric signage and pachinko parlors waving banners. Seal-engraving businesses whose owners never bothered coming in. Video arcades that looked anything but fun.

zelkova tree

Shobashi comes alive at night. From appearances, it’s a dump. And from sundown to sun-up, on the third floor of a building throbbing with karaoke reverb, you’ll find the bar where Makiko works, five nights a week, from seven until around midnight.

main port town of Honolulu became an urban slum

MIYAZAKI: A friend of mine from Nagoya says, “Nagoya got rid of alleyways with its city planning. The result is that young people don’t stay there. I was surprised when I came to Tokyo to discover so many narrow alleys that are fun to stroll along.” As I’m used to them, I don’t notice them as much, but alleys seem to provide a psychological

Makiko was a hostess, but that can mean all kinds of different things. Some good, some not so good. Osaka is rife with drinking spots, but an address is enough to tell you what you should expect, in terms of clientele and atmosphere and hostesses. She worked in Shobashi, the neighborhood the three of us worked in for years after we ran off that