Dear reader who just arrived there, welcome!

First of all, thank you. I’m sorry if sometimes my English may sound weird but I’m actually a non-native speaker… I hope you all will be indulgent about few grammar mistakes or weird words popping up from time to time in my writings.

The first time I came to Japan, I knew almost nothing about this country. I felt incredibly small compared to all these high buildings in this megalopolis which never really sleeps. Everything was amazing and exciting. I did all the big tourist attractions: museums, zen gardens, Kyoto and so on… I even had my first onsen ever in Hakone. I went back to Europe, my head full of beautiful memories to cherish forever and excited to visit this country again, maybe one day… And then, unexpectedly, life brought me back to Japan more often than I thought, first to visit and finally to settle down. I crossed a border and went to the other side of the mirror; and I found out that visiting Japan and living in Japan will involve very different issues but also very different pleasures and happiness.

Since then I saw Japan changing a lot. Over the past years I was buildings disappeared, some really symbolic as for example the PARCO Shibuya branch (which will be rebuilt by the way) or the botanical walls of dojunkai apartments in the famous Omotesando avenue, but also smaller ones like stores ran by a family for decades and selling senbei or traditional japanese sweets. I witnessed the small shopping mall in the north exit of Shimokitazawa train station being demolished, bringing down with it the remains of the after WWII black market which was there. Sometimes I felt like going somewhere again to eat or have a coffee and found out that the place simply disappeared, quietly, silently…

There is a part of Japan dying slowly. Some people will tell you it’s normal, times are changing, so modernizing is better than letting old shacks falling down on us. But for me, it actually has a bitter taste…

I started to look more carefully around me, to be touched more deeply by a small retro detail in a street, an old house with its 60’s glass windows, a small old shop bravely standing in two big mansions… If I was a retro café enthusiast for years, over time, hunting for more retro places from Meiji, Taisho or Showa era, became a real hobby and such a big source of happiness for me. I can’t obviously stop the time to keep intact a Japan in sepia colors which is changing again and again at the exact same time I’m gazing at it. However, I can keep a record of it, share it with people, and make its colors being vivid a little bit more.

Retro Tabi Tokyo will tell the chronicles of a slowly disappearing Japan.

I truly hope you’ll enjoy this little time slip in Japan. Thank you so much.