27october2025
TOKYO (KOMAE,) JAPAN STREET ART: CULTURE SPECIFIC
27october2025
Category: JAPAN
TOKYO (KOMAE,) JAPAN: SENRYŪ-JI TEMPLE
Just a minute’s walk from the North Exit of Komae Station, you step off the Odakyū Line and into another world. Senryū-ji Temple sits quietly in the heart of Komae City, a reminder that even in suburban Tokyo—defined by trains, apartments, and convenience stores—the past is still alive, waiting for you to notice. I happened upon it and could feel the pull from concrete into lush greenery.
Founded in the year 765 by the monk Rōben, who is also tied to the great Tōdai-ji in Nara, Senryū-ji has been a place of prayer and continuity for more than twelve centuries.
The temple grounds are not sprawling, but they hold treasures: a two-storied bell tower rare in Tokyo, cultural assets protected by the city, and a pond dedicated to Benzaiten said to have appeared when Rōben prayed for rain. Walking here, you can feel how myth, history, and everyday devotion overlap.
What I love about Senryū-ji is its sense of contrast. The hum of trains and the rhythm of weekend revelers are right outside the gate, but inside, it’s very quiet, like today, with only the sounds of consistent raindrops pitter-pattering, either on statues, the top of my umbrella, or the changing leaves of autumn. Seasonal colors shift the mood.
Tokyo has countless temples, and many of them overwhelm with their size or their crowds. Senryū-ji is different. It doesn’t demand attention—it invites it. I could breathe here. And I was alone. So rare these days.
If you find yourself on the Odakyū Line, make the stop. Wander into Senryū-ji. It won’t take long, but it may stay with you far longer than you expect. Writing about it now is bringing the experience even more deeply within me.
26oct25
TOKYO, JAPAN: A PUDDLE
There are times in Tokyo when I forget I’m in one of the busiest cities in the world. I found a place, a moment, a few days ago—this quiet path, where puddles were still holding the rain.
Between city and forest, between movement and stillness.
What I love about Tokyo is this duality: the trains rush, the crowds roar, but just a few steps away, in the center of it all, there’s a silence so deep. The path is empty. It feels like the city is giving you space to breathe.
A reminder that Tokyo is not only glass towers and crowded crossings. Sometimes, it’s just this: a quiet trail, a puddle, and a canopy of trees.
October 2025
TOKYO, JAPAN: SLEEPWALKERS
Lately, I’ve begun to sense the steady, relentless, almost mechanical way that Tokyo moves. From the the platforms where trains arrive with the precision of a heartbeat, Tokyo moves on schedule. And within it, so do we.
I’ve started to notice the sleepwalkers. Men and women, faces unreadable, either a mask concealing, or eyes closed for sleep. From home to train. From train to work. From work to train. From train back home. Over and over, as if the day itself were just one long, looping dream.
And somewhere along the way, I’ve realized that in a month of being back here, I have become one of them. I shuffle with the morning crowd, step into the train with barely a thought, watch stations pass in a blur. Work comes and goes. Conversations feel muted, like voices breaking through a fog. Then back again: train, home, sleep, repeat.
It’s not despair exactly. It’s something softer, stranger—a drifting. A quiet surrender to the current of Tokyo life. I feel the weight of my own body moving, but sometimes it feels like I’m not even steering anymore. Just a passenger in the dream.
Maybe this is Tokyo’s secret: we’re all walking in our sleep, together. Moving as one, hypnotized by routine, yet still alive in it, still breathing, still searching for that moment—just one—that might jolt us awake. I want to snap out of it, but don’t know how.
Until then, I walk. I ride. I return. And I will do it all again tomorrow. Because I am a sleepwalker now, too.
October 2025
TOKYO, JAPAN GRAFFITI: GRAFFITI TUNNEL
There’s a tunnel I walk through sometimes in Tokyo, a stretch of concrete under the train tracks. The walls are covered in layers of graffiti—silver throw-ups, messy tags, bursts of color.
Salarymen walk through it without looking up, briefcases in hand. Nobody really stops here. But the walls show something the clean streets above ground don’t show you.
Tokyo is so often perfect—quiet trains, no litter, iconic vending machines that never fail. But down here, under the bridge, it’s imperfect. Human. And I love that.
I believe that what makes a city real isn’t what it tries to present—it’s…this.
24oct25
TOKYO (SHIMO-KITAZAWA,) JAPAN STREET ART: SAMURAI
17oct25
TOKYO (JIMBŌCHŌ,) JAPAN STREET ART: E by BEN EINE
11oct25
TOKYO (KAGURAZAKA,) JAPAN: BETWEEN WORLDS
Kagurazaka feels like a neighborhood caught between worlds.
Writers once wandered here, geisha houses once flourished here, and now it’s families, students, shopkeepers, and the occasional traveler like me.
12oct25
TOKYO (KAGURAZAKA,) JAPAN: BAKENEKO FESTIVAL 2025
An annual cat-costume parade and event centered on bakeneko — supernatural or “monster cats” in Japanese folklore.
It’s held in mid-October in the Kagurazaka neighborhood of Tokyo.
The concept is tied to folklore about cats acquiring magical or supernatural powers (bakeneko).
12oct25
TOKYO (JIMBŌCHŌ,) JAPAN STREET ART: KEITH RICHARDS
11oct25