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February 22, 2007
Jimbocho (神保町) - book stores and coffee
I met Alex for yesterday - he works in Awajicho and there is not much there. I take that back...we went to a very good Italian place for lunch, but that is about it.
However, it is really close to some cool places. One of those is Jimbocho, and after lunch I walked around there for awhile. Here is one of the main intersections and it is quite a contrast to some of the newer parts of the city.
This area of Tokyo is well-known for all the bookstores. I walked by a lot of them, but maybe I will have to learn Japanese before I ever stop in and buy something. Having said that, I love book stores and no matter where you are or what language you speak, a certain level of comfort always exists. So, I really enjoyed "just walking around".
With lots of bookshops, there is inevitable a lot of coffee shops as well. I wandered down a small alley that had a couple that looked very cool. One was a jazz cafe, which is on the left below. The other cafe (on the right) is just kind of funky and I stopped in there. I loved it, except that fitting the chair, table and my apparently too tall frame together wasn't working. Still, very cool place and it is a bar at night, so maybe I need to go back and drink something a little more fortifying.
I finished up by heading over to Suidobashi to catch the JR train home. I would have wandered a bit more, but I had to go to the driving school last night - I will write all about that soon. It is interesting. Here is the "waterfont":
Oh, Alex...happy birthday.