WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS: Pól Ó Conghaile
“You always bump into someone you know here,” Daniela Baggio Morano exclaims, waving to a passer-by. She’s walking me from Kōenji train station into a kaleidoscopic flurry of vintage clothes shops, secret vinyl stores and lantern-lit laneways wafting with smells from early evening izakayas (pubs).
It’s Saturday afternoon, daylight is dipping and neon signs are sparking to life, cooking up a weird, electro-sunset that makes everyone look like the cocktail party version of themselves. Passing beneath a bridge, we pause to watch a young band of buskers bash out their take on W B Yeats’ poem Down by the Salley Gardens. A JR Line train thunders overhead. And Daniela keeps spotting people she knows. It’s the last thing I expected in Tokyo — a sprawling super-city that’s home to 37 million souls.