Walk Around The Neighborhood

Last weekend was the first real free weekend in a while for me. We spent much of it walking around town, and I took the old Voigtländer camera with me.

This weekend saw the Ebisu festival, dedicated to one of the gods of good fortune, and celebrated especially by small businesses. Here in Osaka it's a pretty big thing, with a parade of celebrants going through the business and shopping districts in costume.

The Ebisu parade passing Shinsaibashi. The dressed-up young women are selected among candidates by the temple. Apparently it's a pretty popular thing and they get lots more applications than they need.

Later on I took a stroll right around our local neighborhood. A benefit of large cities is that even the streets just around your home are interesting in their own right.

The Yokobori canal (which becomes Doutonbori downstream) is not the most traditionally beautiful scenery in the world, perhaps, but it is fascinating in its own way; moody, mysterious and somehow cut off from the bustling city all around it.

Hey, I had no idea we have a "ZIP Time Producer" just around the corner! Of course, I'm a bit hazy on what they actually do, though. Produce "Zip Time" I guess?

There's quite a lot of vaguely media-oriented companies around here; ad companies, design, typesetting, promotional products and so on. You can usually recognize them by their incomprehensible shop fronts.

A decidedly old-style business: a second-hand shop, with a mix of old clothes, toys, replica guns, a Star Trek roleplaying game(!), semi-broken electronics and so on. The owner seems to like dressing in his own merchandise. Fun guy.