Jimbocho

I'm back home now. I'm going to continue to post photos from my trip, covering the highlights, while I search for a place on line where I can post them all.



One of the places I wanted to go to while in Tokyo was Jimbocho. It's a section of the city that is famous for the number of booksellers that are there. Above is a view from the exit of the Jimbocho subway station. Just about every sign you can see in the image is for some sort of bookstore.

There were numerous multistory buildings that were single bookstores, or collectives of independent book resellers, like the Iwanami Shoten Annex, pictured below.




Others were just a set of shelves stuck on the alley walls between the buildings, like this one:



Most were these small stores with two doors. You enter on your left, follow the narrow aisle that loops to the back of the store and make your purchase at the register near the exit on the right.



The extent of the area was incredible. I walked two blocks from the subway exit, and except for the occassional sandwich or ramen shop, and all I saw was one book store after another. Even after that two block stretch, when other types of stores began to appear, you could find a bookstore or two in every block.

As someone who's loved to read since I was a kid, I found the existence of such a place to be a delight. And the range of books sold, from antique prints that looked like they were a century or two old to stores which sold nothing but manga (Japanese comic books). Now, I only need to learn to read Japanese.

Erick