Seven fifty-eight and Yanaka is still deciding whether to open. Shutters half up, half down. A broom leaning against a doorframe, nobody holding it yet. The air smells like woodsmoke and something frying, faint, from a kitchen I can't see.
There is a temple here, small, the kind you'd miss if you weren't looking. A cat sleeps on the stone wall beside it, curled into the exact shape of not caring. I have seen this cat before, in other cities, other religions. It always looks the same. Comfortable. Unbothered by the fact that people photograph it like it's doing something remarkable.
Further down, the senbei shop. The woman inside has been turning rice crackers over a grill since, she tells me, her mother's time. The shop smells like soy sauce and heat and something slightly burnt, in the good way. I buy two. I eat one standing in the street, which feels rude somewhere and completely normal here.
This is the Tokyo that didn't get flattened and rebuilt tall. Low roofs, wooden beams gone silver with weather, telephone wires crossing overhead like they're holding the sky in place. My camera stays mostly in the bag. Some mornings you just walk. The film can wait. The light, apparently, cannot, but I let it pass anyway, a few frames, nothing more. Dad used to say Milan had corners like this once, before it didn't. Maybe every city did. Yanaka just forgot to lose them.
