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.
Of course, Sugamo isn’t all about bargains: It’s a living throwback to postwar Japanese culture and tradition, and there’s an appealing retro-cool to the experience. At the end of the Jizo Dori shopping arcade, under a festive archway that welcomes visitors, I was greeted with the sight of a Buddhist nun on the sidewalk busily fanning her hands to whisk away the aches of an elderly female supplicant. Midway along the street, at the immensely popular Koganji Temple, visitors flock to a diminutive statue of the Togenuki Jizo, or “thorn-pulling bodhisattva.” The ritual of washing the figure with a small towel and then pressing the cloth to one’s ailing body is believed to be curative (on weekend days, you can’t even see the bodhisattva through the crowds). Smoke from burning incense wafts around the temple, its aura also meant to be healing. I watched as pilgrims came to bathe in the wisps and toss 50-yen coins into the collection grate as they prayed.
Should you miss a visit with the bodhisattva, rest easy: on the street, the figure also makes a fashionable appearance, emblazoned as it is on the neighborhood’s signature lucky red underwear. There are shops devoted entirely to the brightly-hued garments, which come in all styles and patterns, and related accessories; the going price is around 500 yen a pair (about $4.45, at 112.28 yen to the dollar). It’s a longtime Japanese custom to purchase red garments in celebration of someone turning 60 years old and completing five cycles of the zodiac’s 12 years. Kanreki means “return to the calendar” — the event is considered a rebirth, a return to a second childhood. I chose to celebrate first childhoods, buying for my two young sons small red towels stitched with a monkey and an ox, their favorite animals (and figures from the zodiac), for 420 yen apiece.
Another one of my favorite stops was a beautiful craft shop called Fuyusha, which specializes in chirimen, a 300-year-old weaving technique that is used to make everything from table runners, kimonos and bags to small dolls and toys. I bought a delicate flower-patterned coin purse for 700 yen, and a gorgeous arm-length tenugui (a multipurpose Japanese cotton cloth) printed with a serene ocean of fish, for 1,080 yen.
Speaking of fish, one truly astounding, not-to-be-missed Sugamo experience is an in-depth dive into one of its numerous dried edibles markets. There were luminous displays of crab and tiny shrimp; ropy mounds of mountain jelly vegetable, a dried, stringy green with a lettuce-like crunch, and purplish ribbons of kelp; and booths selling genmaicha, a toasted barley tea, and matcha, a powdered green tea. Every vendor smiled and offered generous tastings. I sampled most everything — though not the whole, dried specimens of soft-shell turtle and pit viper, nestled snugly in their cellophane-wrapped containers.
I was ready for a snack when one wiry old fishmonger hailed me with a delicious sample of chirimen jako, or dried sardines. From there, it was a quick push past the grannies to his friendly female associate, who sold me a heaping wooden boxful of chirimen jako, dried vegetables and sesame, a perfect accompaniment on rice, for 500 yen.
The moment seemed right for a caffeinated beverage, so I looked for one of the neighborhood’s old-fashioned kissaten establishments, with wonderful old neon signs and narrow upstairs rooms that date back to the 1950s. Kissaten means “tearoom,” but most are also coffeehouses that serve sweets, sandwiches and small meals. (Tokyo is crazy for coffee these days — an outpost of the Bay Area’s Blue Bottle Coffee, whose founder was inspired by traditional Japanese tea and coffee rituals, is scheduled to open here in February.)
On the northwest terminus of Sugamo’s shopping street, there’s a lovely little coffee and sweets shop on the tram platform for Koshinzuka Station. The cafe, with a close-up view of the vintage tram cars as they pass by, is called Ippuku-tei, and its specialty is ohagi, a sweet red bean paste wrapped around seasonal mochi rice.
Inside, the sprig-green walls and wood tables were warmly lit, and the hostess gestured to a quiet table at the back. The server, who wore a kerchief over her silver hair, asked if I wanted my coffee hot or cold. Five minutes later, she brought out a black-and-red lacquer tray with a tall glass of iced coffee — the cubes were made out of coffee, so as not to water down the drink as they melted — and neatly arranged chopsticks, next to a handmade ceramic dish of ohagi and a tiny glass pitcher of evaporated milk. A moment later, she also brought out a cup of green tea for me to try.
Her thoughtful attention to detail moved me. And I was astounded by the prices: 320 yen for a meal set with tea, 620 yen for one with coffee. I noticed a bespectacled man seated across the room, leisurely reading the newspaper over his tea and ohagi. The tram rumbled by outside, and I listened to the rhythms of this old-time neighborhood. For a moment, I could see myself coming here every day for a little coffee and conversation, threading my way back home through the narrow lanes, greeting the baker and the fishmonger on the way. If this is the Sugamo way of growing old, you might find me here in another few decades.