One of Tokyo’s mainstay tourist attractions is Harajuku, a labyrinthine shopping district jammed with trend-obsessed teenagers parading famously outlandish fashions. But in spite of Harajuku’s youthful flash and flair, to walk around the city is to realize that Japan is a country of old people. Gray-haired grandpas zip past on bicycles, impressing with their cavalier attitude toward traffic. Immaculately coifed senior women do the same, their faces freshly powdered and lipsticked, their flowered shirts neatly pressed.
A couple of weeks ago, I escaped the pounding dance music and permed, bleach-blond denizens of Harajuku — and its pricey shopping options — for its less frenetic, old-school antithesis: Sugamo, known locally as Grannies’ Harajuku, a neighborhood 30 minutes north on the Yamanote train line. Sugamo is famous in its own right, for a lengthy shopping street, Jizo Dori, that caters not to crazily dressed youngsters but to their elders. And, most important for the budget-conscious, on this avenue, with its mix of Buddhist temples and old-fashioned markets, cafes and bakeries, the prices are right. With the area’s growing population of pensioners, they have to be.
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