The streets in Yanaka are narrow enough that two people have to decide who steps aside first. At 8:28 it's mostly me deciding, since the neighborhood is still waking up. Wooden houses lean into each other like they've been having the same conversation since 1945. Some of them probably have.
There's a shop two turns in that sells only rice crackers. Not a side business, not a snack counter attached to something bigger. Just crackers, stacked in paper sleeves, a woman behind the counter who doesn't look up when I pass. I like places that refuse to diversify. It says something about patience, about trusting that one good thing done daily is enough.
A cat is asleep on a low stone wall, the kind that marks where one house ends and another begins. It doesn't move when I get close with the camera. Doesn't move when the shutter clicks either. Tokyo cats have a confidence I associate with old money, or old souls, or both.
The air smells like someone's breakfast, miso maybe, and wet wood from an overnight rain that's already drying. No trains yet this close in, no crowds, just the occasional bicycle bell from somewhere behind me. Yanaka survived the firebombing that leveled most of the city, and you can feel that history in the way the streets refuse to be straight lines. They curve like they're still avoiding something.
I walk slow because the place asks you to. There's no version of rushing that makes sense here. My camera hangs loose on its strap, mostly forgotten until something like the cat or the cracker shop insists on being remembered. Bom dia, old Tokyo. You wear your age well.
