So we went to Shimokita early and walked around.
It's funny how at noon, Shimokita is just waking up while by noon, Akasaka is in a mid-day lunch buzz ^^;
Big diff in atmosphere.
Anyway, seems like they pulled down yet another shop lot. I hope not another parking lot would be put up in its place :(
But it was interesting coz the empty space exposed a house covered with trees and creeping plants!!!
It's nice to be able to see that which is usually hidden otherwise.
On another note, the Taisho era store which has survived the clearance on the North-side's labyrinth leftover has been vandalized.
Quite sad, because now it means there no point in preserving the store and it's just better off demolished since it looks more like a dilapidated shack now than a piece of Shimokita's history. Pity really, that another unique characteristic of Shimokita will be yet lost.
On that note, I also realized that a lot of shops in Shimokita have actually shuttered and in their place new yet-another-cafe-eatery or a parking lot pop up.
It's like.... the thing that makes Shimokita unique are its nick-nack stores, its record shops, its second-hand clothes stores- but business IS bad for these stores and one by one they've closed shop because of dying owners and rising real estate prices.
So all you get are generic stores, chain stores or food places ANDDD parking lots.
So, really basically, that which draws people to this town is slowly disappearing but it's these shops that you need to keep the town alive.
Sometimes I think the town should offer a subsidy to stores that are unique but may not have a ton of sales, because in the end, it attracts more people to start businesses there, and it also draws people to come visit the town and hopefully spend more money here.
It's sad really.
There's so many tourists, like FOREIGN tourists in Shimokita these days because of sites like Tripadvisor and so, but what I want to tell them is that, really, Shimokita has lost a lot of the charm that used to make it unique. And they're better off going to places like Nakano or Koenji if they really wanna see small quaint stores on shopping arcade streets.
These days Shimokita feels more like a smack between Omotesando (the high-end fashionable street) and Harajuku (the too young fashionable street). But Shimokita isn't really fashionable because there aren't a lot of boutiques here anyway, so it's just the "nice cafe and eatery" place. Which is a pity, because this place used to a really cosy unique neighborhood town.
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