Walks

Nine years in and I still walk most nights. This page is the running index of the walks I’ve written up so far. Not a guide — a record.

1. Nishi-Shinjuku at 02:40

The most common walk of my nine years. From my building on the west side of the station, past the salaryman noodle place that stays open until 03:30, up through the office district to the blue-hour glass of the Metropolitan Government building. The light here is a specific combination: sodium-yellow at street level from the older lamps, cold-white from the office towers still lit by janitors, red from the vending machines on every corner. Nothing surprises me about it any more, which is why I photograph it.

Best window: 02:30 to 03:15. After 03:15 the first cleaners appear and the streets change register. Before 02:30 there are still late diners in the alleys and it’s a different photograph.

2. Ginza after the shops close

Ginza on a Tuesday at 22:15 is empty in a way that surprises visitors who have only seen it in daylight. The luxury shops turn their interior lighting down but never off; the pavements are wet even when it hasn’t rained; the crossings still function on their pedestrian countdowns even when there is nothing to cross. A slow walk from the metro at Ginza to Yurākuchō is maybe twenty minutes and gives you three or four small art galleries whose windows stay lit through the night.

Not a Tokyo you see if you leave the hotel at 09:00.

3. Odaiba, the long way

Everybody takes the Yurikamome line to Odaiba because it’s the picturesque approach. I like the pedestrian walk across the Rainbow Bridge for the same reason I like arriving anywhere on foot: you earn the view. The walk is a slow forty minutes and gives you the water twice, first as a long dark rectangle under the bridge, then as reflections on the museum-quarter forecourt.

The immersive art museum I write about on the journal page is a fifteen-minute walk from the far side of the bridge. If you’re going to visit it, do this walk first, it changes what the museum feels like.

4. Roppongi, quiet blocks

Not the district for a photographer looking for quiet, and yet: three blocks north of the main crossing there is a small stretch of galleries and independent restaurants that stay open until 23:00 and then simply switch off. Between 23:00 and 00:15 you get a strange corridor of low light and closed doors, which photographs like a stage set for a play that already ended.

This walk pairs unusually well with a black coffee at the 24-hour spot on the corner of Roppongi-dōri; the staff let me sit with a camera on the table without commenting, which is not a small favour.

5. Rooftop above Shibuya, the north deck

The tall building above the crossing has an observation floor. On a clear evening in blue hour, the north deck (less photographed than the south) is a strong twenty minutes. The crossing itself is a lattice of headlights and umbrellas; the district to the north unfolds toward Shinjuku in a long amber ribbon. It is not a walk exactly, more a punctuation mark inside an evening walk.

I am not a person who queues for photographs, so I go around 21:45 when the sunset-obsessed have left and the crowd thins in a specific and helpful way.