Static mode stroll

A piece of street in Sarugaku district at a stone throw of the book shops district of Kanda-Jimbocho in Tokyo. The requisite to take a still picture is to stop. The requisite to take interest and find it in the banality of an anonymous street is to stop too. Standing is still too risky though. It allows to move again too fast. The companion to flânerie mode walking pace is seating still. So let's seat down. That's were the first problem starts. Tokyo has no benches along the streets. Like dust bins, those are to be found mostly in parks. But I sat down, on a tiny piece of staircase along a green curtain of shrubs that separates the street from a junior high school. I had a bottle of tea and chocolate from a convenience store nearby. Strategy to defuse the natural conspicious look of passersby, although few they were. Stillness in the street is suspect. For the self, stillness is a conscious, focused exercise. Only birdwatchers are pre-qualified to observe the streets.

On the opposite side of the street, the grayish two-stories building is a rice shop, and probably a rare survivor of WWII bombardments. The yellow shop on the right is Kandahar, a mountain trekking goods and apparels shop that does not turn into a surfboard outlet in Summer. A rare case of single activity dedicated shop in this area. Exhausting a place could mean going through all the nomenclature of each shop and restaurants making business here that are visible on that panoramic picture. Standing still and watching allows to discover in the daily surrounding that it is still full of unknown spots.

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