Today I went out on a walk with Mikan, a friend I met through Neocities! They are into looking for signs with old, no-longer used city names, so I accompanied them on their little journey.
For this walk, we were looking around Nishi-Ogikubo. While the neighborhood we were looking at is now called Shoan, it used to be called Nishi-Takaido. The name change happened around 60 years ago, which means there are still some houses and businesses with the old address. Mikan told me the key to finding older signs is in the brick walls surrounding the houses - if they look older, chances are they will have the old address carved into them.
Walking around, we quickly noticed that a lot of the older houses were being torn down and replaced with newer buildings. This meant that a lot of the older signs were already taken down/destroyed. We managed to find a few addresses with the old name, but they were all residential so I will not be posting them here. It was really nice being able to take a long walk.
For lunch, we went to my favorite restaurant Saizeriya! While eating, we ended up talking a LOT about our past passion for plane spotting. I used to go spotting a lot, but haven't really been back since COVID. Mikan was the same way as well. I think we both ended up finding more interesting things. For them it was baseball and old city names, and for me it was animating.
On the way home, Mikan told me about a map that is still at Shinjuku station. It still had the "Teito Rapid Transit Authority" logo, which is what Tokyo Metro used to be called until 2004. It also didn't have the new "Takanawa Gateway" station listed, much to my joy (I swear that station name is an eyesore). There was a lot of construction going on around the area so who knows how long it will be around, but I'm glad I was told about it!
Hopefully when it is cooler we can go on a walk again together!
オマケ：みかんさんへ