Project Concepts

I'll be completely honest. I came to Tokyo for the fashion. I love the magazine "Fruits," and wrote my Japanese history paper on Tokyo style. Living in a new city for a week, I've been most preoccupied with the basic navigation of the city (for the purpose of survival). I found this so intriguing. There's no plazas, no street names. Throw away your western logic! I remember my first night walking down the streets of Ontakesan, cars, motorcycles, bikes, swerve past pedestrians. There were no "sidewalk." Just chaos.

I've now been living here for a over a week and just starting to understand how to maneuver about this city. Stand to the left. Watch out for the bikers lane on the pedestrian crosswalk. Don't look for a crosswalk look for a for a bridge to cross a major street. Speed limits are posted on the pavement instead of a sign. I catch my self analyzing new symbols, colors, and markings struggling to decipher their meanings as I pass.







































After reading Walking in Tokyo I could completely relate to Richie's descriptions.

"...signs everywhere all of them shouting semiotic babble, signifiers galore, all reaching out to the walker.

...the streets of Tokyo are crooked and twisted.

...And the streets are narrow-all too narrow if it is one where cars are permitted. And there are little alley ways just big enough for one person . And there are things to look at!"

So being excited by the streets and alleys, markings, and signage. I chose a block of Minato-ku and began to study the "language of a pathways."

Public Pathways

This is my focus area of Minto-ku. It is mostly residential with a few busy streets. I think I may begin my project studying pathways in the broadest since. A map with roads, trains, or rivers marks a passage through land.
















Blue line above: River- pathway for water.


Here is a close-up of one of the widest of those lines. You can see that this pathway is just pathways within a pathway.








Pedestrian pathway over a busy street.












Pedestrian path Juxaposed with bike path.















Symbols explain how to use pathways.


Varying road width: pathway for people and automobiles.






































Paths for the visually impaired:
This could be the single most reason why i find this topic so interesting. You can't help but notice the yellow tiles connect the city. I remember reading about this phenomenon while researching for a project involving navigation for the visually impaired.

Private Pathways

I love this section because I think it's the most personal. Richie talks about Japanese streets as being very public, and in contrast Japanese homes are very private. I love some of these shots. I felt a little bit like a voyeur, but I cherish these images most because they are not uniform and stale like the yellow tiles. The spaces between homes and the narrow alleys, differ the most from American neighborhood I'm used to.