On Sunday I didn't end up making it to the St. Paddy's Day parade, but took a trip with Misa to ShimoKitazawa instead. For those who don't know, Shimo-kita is a smallish area that is jam packed with: cafes, clothing stores, schoolgirls, live houses (that's places that have lie music for the folks back home), arcades, and is the hippest place west of the Yamanote. Being a west Tokyo denizen for my entire tenure here has skewed my appreciation towards stuff out this way. It's kinda strange, but a lot of your experience in Tokyo is determined by where you live and where you work. If you live west of the Yamanote (which ensorcels encircles the center of the city) most of the trains run east to west. This means that often there are places geographically close to you that are a royal pain to get to. I should say that this has never hampered me much because I have a scooter and a reasonably fast bicycle, but if you're reliant on public transportation, going north to south means riding the bus, which most people wouldn't wish on their worst enemies.
Anyhow, Shimokitazawa (along with Harajuku) was one of the first places that I hung out in with regularity. It was a short 10 min. train ride when I was feeling lazy or it was raining, and took only about 20 minutes by bicycle from the kaikan. I spent a lot of my free time during the first couple years here hanging out there, mostly in 3rd Stone. But as time went on and I found my sea legs, I started to branch out more and found more interesting places to go both near my apartment and in 'the city.' The long and short of it being that I rarely go to Shimo anymore, and so this weekend's trip -- the farthest that Misa would sign off on -- was my first in a long time.
We walked around for a bit taking in all the sights and sounds and window shopping. Ok, so Misa was shopping, I was mostly looking for good photos to take and just enjoying being outside (despite the bitterly cold wind). But, much to my surprise, we found a super cool clothing store. They specialize in what could be described as clothes that put a modern spin on traditional Japanese fashion and themes. They had tons of interesting (design-wise) tshirts and other clothing that was inspired by ukiyo-e and prints common to old-skool Japanese textiles. One look at the wares made both of us think that this would be a much better place to by gifts for our peeps stateside than the Oriental Bazaar. The one problem is that most of the stuff I saw ran a little on the small side, a common problem for us foreigners here, but if you're emaciated, or buying for someone who is, you're all set.
As the title of the post says, the name of the shop is dorobô nikki 'thieves' diary'. Check their website for directions.
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