Kanda old houses

I have added a set of pictures showing old houses in the Kanda district of Tokyo. No filter, no fancy. Plain.

This is not intended to highlight the good old days when Kanda had a human sized face. You would not wish to live in any of these houses. Most often, these are restaurants possibly thriving enough to keep at bay for a while the bulldozers. Kanda is a sad place on week-end, and the sun shining today could not change the fact that here is a sad, sad place. I would suggest you visit Kanda on week days when it is thriving with salarymen and life. Some old houses are sometimes covered with copper plates. This explains the green moldy tone. Wood is replaced by stone in rare cases, and a multi-story office building in subdued colored bricks gives a glimpse at Kanda before second wolrd war (why put capital letters on this?).

For the interesting part of those buildings is that they are a rare case of war survival despite the bombardments. They also give a reminder that there was a time when the average building height was two stories. The surrounding of these buildings on death row is an eclectic but typical example of I build any kind of crap building I fancy about because I don't give a dam about perspective, the surrounding and the aesthetics at large. There are plenty of places like that, in urban Japan, and elsewhere as well. It is still worth the trip, but avoid week-ends by all means. You can go instead to Akihabara district which is located a stone throw from here, spend the money and be busy enough watching the crowd to forget that here again is a terribly dispiriting district. I could not refrain but remember sad and sorry Sundays in Paris while in Kanda on this Sunday, April 17th of year 2005.

The first picture you can see on this page is a little bit on the outskirts almost along Yasukuni Dôri avenue. The name is Matsuya, a soba restaurant closed on Sunday, but where you will want to slurp the delicious noodles and quickly enjoy the place. If you are not familiar with a soba restaurant, get there at 11:30 am before the crowd, or after 1 pm and just ask for cold zaru-soba, or even better, goma-zaru-soba with delicious sesame seeds sauce. A real treat! A nice page to read here dated 1997 but still valid.