Tokyo Ruins Hunt - Down a Side Street

Looking over a rusty, graffiti covered fence, you can just make out the top of an old warehouse beyond the line of buildings around.




Yesterday I went out to Tokyo, and down south of Shibuya to Ebisu Station. The area is famous (sort of) as a good place to get a beer and I know people I worked with used to talk about going there for the night life, but I'm pretty sure its heyday was done long before I came to Japan.

Yes, you can get a good cheap beer there, and some decent food (which I found on the way back), but first I took a walk back behind the main streets, across the bridge and into the more densely packed area around the station. And this is what I found there.




Ebisu and the Hiroo area to the north is a lot like a million other chunks of the urban sprawl of Tokyo. But although it may resemble parts of Shinjuku and the whole Taito area in many ways, there is something very distinct and cool about the whole place. I like the odd cool curved glass cornering on this building on the corner by the river in the picture above this one.




Farther to the north you'll find some seriously cool old warehouses and buildings, like the one you can see here peeking out from behind whatever this used to be here.




As is often the case when ruin hunting in Tokyo, the road that seems to be taking you right where you want to go isn't. But along the way you can find other cool stuff.



Finally after walking in what turned out to be a loop around it, I got to the back side of the big old factory. It reminds me very much of the old dojunkai style - a thick concrete structure with very obvious reinforcement and pipework running up the sides. The massive chunk looks like it could survive a nuclear war, and in many ways feels like it already did.




A thin stairwell can be seen between the main building and a secondary structure on the left.




Finally I'm at the front. There you can see the sign which reads Takachiho Shoji (タカチホ商事), what I believe is the offices for a chemical engineering company. The thing is, though, I'm not sure whether this is really a ruined old building, or if someone isn't still using it. Or it may be the home of other people who've since claimed it for their own. Very cool construction, though.




Here's another view of it, looking back down the alley.




I was going to finish there, but I had to include this better angle of the stairs and the space connecting the two structures. Very strange. It feels like you're peering into the set of some post apocalypse movie.

***

It's amazing the world you can find yourself sliding into if you look past the main signs, lights, and noise of the city, and peer back inside. Just look a little and see what's there.

All pictures in this set were taken with my Panasonic GX7 micro four thirds camera, using mostly the 14mm F2.5 pancake lens and the one zoom was taken with the 45mm F1.8 I just got recently. For more shots, check out my Flickr Photostream as always, or if you want to see some more cool ruins I've found in Japan check out my other posts: Ruins Trek - to the Nakagusku Kogen Hotel (in Okinawa) or Ruins Trek - to the Seika Dormitory (Tokyo).