Tokyo Redux

GINZA STREET CORNER, CIRCA 1948


GINZA STREET CORNER, 2003

Today's my Mom's birthday so she's been in my thoughts a lot. I really do miss her so much. I dug up this photo my dad took when they were in Tokyo. I think it's my favorite photo he took of her. When Brad and I lived in Tokyo I was on a mission to locate the street corner where the photo was taken. Seems like it would have been easy to look up the Ginza Avenue and St. Luke's Avenue intersection, but those street names no longer exist. The street names were designated by the Americans during the occupation. The Japanese use a totally different and very arcane system for designating addresses and most of the streets don't have names. A few months before we left Tokyo I met up with an American who had been living there since the 40s and he was able to identify the street corner using the Okura building as a reference. That building is gone now, which explains why I never could find it during my three years of wanderings in the Ginza. About a week before we left Tokyo, Brad took my picture on the very same street corner where my Mom's picture was taken.