Blog - Totan Gallery and Asagaya-jūtaku
Totan Gallery and Asagaya-jūtaku
Yesterday we had beautiful weather, with temperatures around 18C, so we rode our bicycles to Asagaya. Our route included buying some bread at Bagel, buying some Japanese sweets at Usagi-ya (where the specialty is rabbit-shaped sweet red beans manju), and eating lunch at Indian/Nepalese restaurant Kumari (my shrimp curry was great!).
We then headed down to Totan Gallery (open in October 2006), located in building #25 of Asagaya-jūtaku, to check out an exhibition of works by Shimodaira Akinori. His colorful works portraying mostly animals covered all walls, ceilings and floors (there was even some paint on the tatami mats!).
The gallery felt very free, with all doors open and people walking in and out. We were offered some very nice tea too. Some local young girls were in and out playing, and they greeted me "Hello!" a few times. :)
The artist was also around, probably about to prepare for a live painting event at the end of the afternoon. We didn't stay until then though, but bought a badge and a postcard.
On our way out, the girls were back from a bicycle ride with some yakiimo, and one offered us pieces saying "I am yakiimo...? hmm.. You please yakiimo?" Hmm, 2 morceaux de robot for effort. :)
Asagaya-jūtaku is a quiet neighborhood that was built in the late 50s, and is set to all be destroyed at the end of 2007 to then be rebuilt. There's a lot of garden and park space among the 52 buildings which hold a total of 350 homes. Unfortunately, many of the buildings are in poor state and have already been shut, though near half of the homes remain occupied.
It's a bit frightening to think of what the place will become next. Will all of this be replaced by boring 6-floor apartments too close to each other like the rest of the city? Even if it might not make any sense economically, we definitely need more places like this, not less.
Visit while you can!
Asagaya-jūtaku: 4-3 Narita-higashi, Suginami-ku, Tokyo
Totan Gallery: Bldg #25, apt #4 (map)
Bonus karaoke (also in Minami-Asagaya).
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 19:45 | Tweet
|
Trackback
Comments RSS
I lived a 2-minute walk from there, and I was so in love with the area, but I had no idea of the art gallery, nor that they're going to destroy it so soon. A pity! I hope they'll keep it green and that it won't turn into Minami Asagaya Hills. Any info on who is building it up again?
Btw, great choice for bagels!
Posted by jens on March 6, 2007 at 00:04
I had a feeling that you lived close to there!
All the details on the new development can be found here:
http://www.geocities.jp/asagaya_jyutaku/page/saikaihatu/
Btw are you back in Sweden? I tried to call you the other day and got a "no such number" message. :)
Posted by Patrick on March 6, 2007 at 11:01
Interesting! It's actually a really great location. Right by a large park and river and like a 5 minute walk to the station. Wouldn't mind settling down in a place like that.
But yeah, I'm back in Sweden for a while... :(
I hope Softbank keep the number for me while I'm gone though! :-)
Posted by jens on March 10, 2007 at 22:02