Walking Tokyo Backstreets
Book shopping at Book Off
I was so happy to be back in Tokyo for the last week of my Japan trip and I ended up staying at the same guest house that I begun the trip at because it was the right balance of cost, convenience, and comfort. It’s located close to the Sumida river and on my first night back I went for a walk down it’s western bank.
The last week of my trip in Japan was spent back in Tokyo for the purpose of book buying. Some friends requested sweets as souveniers but for myself, the only thing I really wanted was books — architecture and manga. Books are knowledge. Seeing as this trip was about experiencing architecture, and I wanted to bring back as much knowledge as I could so that I could further develop my own architecture. As well, it became readily apparent when I met my friend in Kagoshima that my Japanese is woefully insufficient and I promised myself that the next time we meet, I’d have better Japanese so we can commune better. To that end, I decided to purchase mangas as I thought it would be a fun way to learn the language.
The biggest used bookstore is a chain called Book Off found all around the country. While it’s generally hard but not impossible to find architecture books, there is a huge amount of manga that’s sold for 110yen/book. About a dollar each. For reference, when newly released, a manga book costs around 600yen ($6). As a form of entertainment, it doesn’t get much better than a dollar a book. So having mapped out all of the Book Offs in the city, I proceeded to walk between them. This allowed me to find books as well as see the backstreets, which is my favourite urbanisim in the world.
There were also a few more museums that I visited in Tokyo, but there always seems to be more. The Nezu Museum was important because my Kagoshima friend had been and we’d talked about how it was designed by Kengo Kuma. I thought it was a pretty good building architecturally and was also happy to find a garden behind it, though it wasn’t that spectacular in the winter. Funnily, the Nezu museum’s most iconic view is a pathway along the side of the building before the entrance.
Nearby is another Kengo Kuma project, the Sunny Hills Cake shop. It’s quite iconic for the facade that is made up of little sticks and that it is a semi wood structure building. I didn’t realize until I went inside that there’s a free tea and cake tasting on the second floor. It was quite nice, but I didn’t think the Taiwanese cake was anything special. It was good but I’ve had equally good in Vancouver I think.
Another museum I went to was 21_21 Design Sight by Tadao Ando. I wasn’t originally planning on going to this project but having seen other Ando projects on my trip I have a new found appreciation for his work. The museum regularly changes exhibitions and the current program was about Christo and Jeanne-Claude ‘L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped. These french artsits wrapped the structure in metalic cloth. It’s pretty cool but I was really there to see the building which was also interesting. Most of it is underground but is still well lit by large windows into a sunken pit. Similar to other Ando projects, there’s a strong circulation route through the building that made it enjoyable to walk through.
Later that day I went to the National Arts Center designed by Kisho Kurokawa. It’s an older building but no less fantastic. It’s actually a huge building with 12 exhibition galleries each the size of gymnasium, maybe bigger. I first heard about it from the movie, Kimi no na wa where the architecture is prominently shown, that being two invert concrete cones in the attrium which have cafes on top. It’s a wonderful space with lots of light. At the time, there was caligraphy on display.
The first time in Tokyo I stumbled on the GA gallery where I saw Yo Shimada’s houses. Afterwards I looked and found that there’s another architectural specific gallery called the MA gallery where I saw an exhibit on sustainability and bikable cities. It was interesting because it had some diagrams about recycling materials, something I’d looked at during school, and it was free so I didn’t have to pay. They also have an architectural bookshop but because they don’t offer a tax discount I didn’t buy anything.
Foreigners in Japan on a short stay visa enjoy a 10% tax exemption at certain stores with purchases over 5000yen ($50). This includes clothing stores like Uniqlo where I stocked up on some clothes that are also about half the price for the same thing in Canada, pharmacies for skincare, makeup etc… and the bigger bookstores. Some Book Offs, the used bookstore also have a tax exemption but I never made it over 50$ at once.
As for the big book store, I made two trips and bought about $400 worth of architecture books,on top of having picked up a few at the used book stores. The thing is, most of these books are impossible to get in Canada and even when they’re available on amazon, they’re marked up about 3 times. Plus in Japan, the books are cheap to begin with. Whereas an architecture book in Canada would be cheap if it were below $50, I bought a whole bunch for around $18 each and the most expensive was $45.
Needless to say, I felt pretty giddy getting all these books, like a kid getting candy or Christmas presents. This and buying people souveniers is something new to me. On my previous trips I’ve rarely bought anything. Even two years backpacking around the world, I came back with only 5 books and a stack of free city maps/brochures picked up along the way.
Once I’d finished my shopping I intended to walk around the streets of Tokyo some more but it began raining and cooled off so it wasn’t so fun. I thought I’d visit some museums but they were closed on Mondays so I mostly wandered around malls looking at pottery I’d love to buy if I had a home and thinking about what it would be like to live in Tokyo. I revisited Tokyo Station and sought out an underground path between it and the international forumn to avoid the rain — not becaused I needed to get there — but because I was curious if it was possible.
I was sad to leave Tokyo and Japan. I’m not sure when I’ll be back next, but atleast for now I have plenty of reading material to go through and I’ve also committed to studying more Japanese so that I can communicate with my Kagoshima friend.
