1: Shibuya. A smoker in front of the Moyai Statue.

2: Shinjuku. A man plays the drums on the weekend. The Shinjuku area reverberates with a man’s of life, again tonight.

3: Shinjuku. Seven or eight young guys are in front of a department store. They look cool, so I ask to take their picture. “I don’t like that,” said one guy after another, and they headed off. That left the two guys, wearing “knickerbocker” work trousers, that I’d wanted to photograph. It felt like I was being told, “You wanted the shot, go for it.”

4: Shinjuku. A master of the shamisen.

5: Harajuku. Two brightly dressed, hadeko girls arrives as though drawn by Harajuku’s magnetic field.

6: Shinjuku. The area was bustling during the Tori no Ichi Festival. “May I take your picture?” I asked. “What, you really want to photograph me?” he asked repeatedly, looking rather scary. I thought he was going to hit me, but instead, he said, “I like people from Osaka.”

7: Shinjuku. A group of Andean musicians always performs in the same spot. Their group has been shrinking, year after year.

8: Takadanobaba. I was zipping along Okubo-dori on my motercycle when I heard the music and suddenly stopped. I was pulled with the shamisen music into the darkness.

9: Takadanobaba. Out in front of the station, holding a 500ml can of beer in each hand, was an older man who looked like Weegee, the famous photographer. Two cans of beer lit up by the flash: here are the blues.

10: Harajuku. I saw a red Harley parked there that belonged to a woman (I guess) who’d let me take a photograph in Shinjuku some years before. I waited 30 minutes, and we met again after a long time. The riders, and the angel in fishnet tights, never change.

11: Shinjuku. A man stopped his car at the east exit and hastily did some shopping. He had a shrill voice.

12: Harajuku. Mr. Harley Davidson.

13: Shinjuku. A man waiting for someone. A leather jacket and pompadour hairdo–––couldn’t resist photographing him.

14: Harajuku. Met a former member of a Harajuku team I’ve been photographing for more than a decade. He was silent.

15: Harajuku. A man buying a ticket at the crowded Harajuku Station gate. Tights, paper bag, T-shirt, cap, cart, chihuahua, route map. A photograph with all that in one instant–––divine!

16: Shinjuku. A man is in front of a department store at the west exit, where the sun from the west spotlights him and turns him into a star. Negotiations about photographing him go nowhere. I dash to the kiosk, bring back cigarettes and beer, and reopen negotiations. And then–––bottoms up!

17: Shinjuku. Marilyn Monroe appears in the Sunday car-free pedestrian paradise.

18: Shinjuku. Discovering a beautiful woman in front of a department store show window.

19: Shinjuku. A person who had taken a selfie. We spent a good twenty minutes standing there talking about photography and cameras.

20: Shibuya. Waiting at Hachiko–––no longer!

21: Shinjuku. The balloons add a story to the photograph. Sometimes I just want to jump on something like that.

22: Shinjuku. The streets are full of surprises. Turn that corner, and I’ll meet something, I think, and can’t stay at home.