Walking Around Kashiwa on a Grey Day [ GX7 ]

You never know what you'll find until you look.




Wandering around town with nothing to do lets you explore a little farther out from your usual walk. Today after work the weather was not great but the rain stopped just enough that I decided I needed to head in to town and see where the roads took me.




OK, not all of my journey was random. I've wanted to get a picture of this building for a while now. If you walk a ways away from Kashiwa station in either direction you suddenly run into a bunch of old chunky buildings like this one, and they all have a few things in common.

First, they all scream of 70s/early 80s blocky design.




Second, they almost always contain one or more really sleazy establishments like girly bars, hostess clubs, that kind of stuff. I'm not a fan of those places, but sometimes the smaller bars can be a nice place to sit without the noise of an izakaya and have a beer. There used to be a bar where the local expats in Kashiwa hung out every week but I haven't been there in years.





I have to admit I like this sliver of a bar called Polaris. I wonder how many seats they have inside there?




This little curved place on the corner is just cool. One thing about late Showa architecture in Japan - it may be ugly but it's rarely uninteresting.




This picture and the one at the top of this post are probably the coolest ones I took this time out. Wandering around quite far from the station I suddenly happend upon this little temple. I have no idea what it's called but it's a neat little place, built seemingly on top of an old shed. Yes, I did walk up to the temple itself. Very cool.




An interesting oddly shaped old house sits next to an old, possibly uninhabited apartment complex.




Just when I was about to call it a day and stop off at a McDonald's to have a coffee and get out of the rain I noticed this odd chunk of a building. I think it is/was someone's house, but now the main feature of this tin/concrete block is the mass of vines growing out from the rooftop garden, now in bloom.




That is just a beautiful little structure there. The building itself occupies about 98% of the lot it's built on, or possibly more if you count the vegetation.

By now I was along one of Japan's major roads - route 16, that goes deep into Chiba prefecture and I think down the length of most of the country.

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Kashiwa may seem to be a busy place and it is. I've heard it referred to as "Little Shibuya" before because there are a lot of places to go shopping and hang out, and it all has a very young feel. But (also like Shibuya), if you step just a few roads back there's a lot more to be seen.

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If you like this post and want to see more of my street photography around Japan, check out my Flickr Photostream or you might like these posts: Shinjuku - Loops Around the West Side, To the Abandoned - Ruins Hunting in Ueno or Kashiwa by Day and Night.

I went light this trip, using only my Panasonic GX7 and the slim 14mm F2.5 wide angle lens.