…miru aho.

The Awa-odori festival is said to have originated from a drunken celebration around Tokushima castle in the 1500s. While the largest celebration in the country is still held in Tokushima every August, a close runner-up is the annual Awa-odori festival held during the last weekend in August at Tokyo’s Koenji station. Rain or shine, around 200 groups participate to heat up the weekend with music and dance in an otherworldly procession through the crowded streets.

Police in Japan are renown for many things, such as their ineffectiveness (letting barefoot suspects escape from the scene of the crime) and their disregard for people’s rights (locking an elderly man in jail for carring a pocketknife when all he wanted to know was the directions to a book store). Here, a group of three officers waves down random cars near Shibuya station while two other officers wait in the wings to interrogate drivers.

Another view can be found here.

Tourists cool themselves off on a hot summer night at Wadakura Fountain Park in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district.

Yukkuri suru – The best way to spend a hot summer day. Here, a couple relaxes in the shade behind Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi. This patch of grass is close to the site where SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi was arrested for public indecency earlier this year.

On November 17, 2008, Taro Okamoto’s famous painting, Asu no Shinwa, or “The Myth of Tomorrow,” was put on permanent display at Shibyua station in the corridor between the JR and Keio lines. The artwork, which was commissioned by a hotel owner in Mexico City in 1967, became “lost” after the businessman encountered bankruptcy, and was discovered in storage in 2003. After some restoration and a brief stint at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Asu no Shinwa, which depicts the aftermath of an atomic bomb, became a normal fixture on the daily path of hundreds of thousands of commuters through Shibuya.

Like a window out into another world, the Hachiko Exit of Shibuya station is likely one of the most well-known faces of Tokyo. And possibly one of the absolute dirtiest places in the country.

The infamous salaryman, known in his later years for his ability to inhale yakitori and stink up a train at 9:30 on a Tuesday night after drinks with the boss. For a young guy, fresh out of uni, this hierarchical world filled with OLs and monotonous mountains of paperwork is often an annoyingly dull place, and coupled with a new life of disposable income, overtime work and endless invitations to drinking parties, the roll of salaryman can often feel awkward and exhausting at first. This guy, possibly of the eigyoman variety, perches on a railing and catches his Z’s in front of the posh Omotesando Hills.

Tokyo’s Shinbashi district is famous for being one location in the metropolis where you can still get a cold beer and some sizzling sticks of yakitori in true Japanese style–out under the open air, huddled around planks of wood balanced on milk crates, red chochin lanterns swaying in the breeze (or from the rumble of a passing train overhead). Here the enthusiastic staff of one izakaya is out early, calling out to passer-bys to come get a drink on a Saturday afternoon.

The infamous Kabuki-cho on the east side of Shinjuku station is Tokyo’s most facinating consentration of seedy and sleezy, all packed in to a few city blocks. Host and hostesses, cross dressers and call girls, all spend their nights here looking for mo’ money and perhaps just a little bit of love. Don’t miss the batting cages!

Although slightly deflated by the supposed small “cat boom” of last year, Japan’s love of dogs is still going strong. Unfortunately, due to space limitations (and the abnormal popularity of the chihuahua) dogs in Tokyo often seem more like cats or rats. Here, a couple struggles to heard a flock of canines through the garden area at Roppongi’s Tokyo Midtown complex.