fudōmae

stress on the ‘o’. love it when the voice in the train announces my stop. fudoooomae – only one stop ‘outisde’ of the yamanote line, the circular trainline that somehow defines central tokyo. still, shinjuku and shibuya, tokyo’s times square districts, are only a couple of stops away.
like a lot of tokyo neigborhoods, fudōmae hides – on the backside of the big expressways and traintracks – a labyrinth of tiny alleys, small shops, restaurants, lowrise residences, old trees, and here and there a temple or a shrine, hardly visible at the end of a long set of steps. on top of that, fudōmae has retained a certain rural feel to it. a great place to live – fort greene of tokyo... maybe east village.


people lining up at the neighborhood’s favorite eel place




old and young and motorbikes

fudōmae means “in front of the fudo”. the fudo, “he who doesn’t move, he who doesn't change his mind”, is a mythical knight who protects the neighborhood from evil spirits. a friendly guy, easier to approach than a temple or a shrine, even though he doesn’t move and looks kind of angry.




today a festival lured us into the fudo grounds. a drummer on a tower, dotted with lanterns, the elderly women of the neighborhood performing dances around the tower, kids joining in. tomo told me the dances were originally performed to entertain the farmers during the lazy hot and humid days of the summer season, before harvesting work starts in september. the movements of the women, neatly dressed in black yukata, resemble different types of field work. foodstalls serving octopus on skewers, the “isn’t it hot today” speech of the local mayor, strolling families, chriping criquets, happy faces, no cellphones. hard to imagine we’re in tokyo, only a couple of stops from sinjuku.