One day＠Kabukicho #DAY168 - A night spent with my usual friend after several weeks.

When was the last time I went to Kabukicho? It was probably about three weeks ago. I'm totally okay whenever to see her, but my friend is really busy with her work recently and we can't seem to find time to meet up. We used to meet twice a week at one point, but looking back now, it was not kind of normal in a way.

Anyway, it had been about three weeks since I last met up with her, and we spent our time exchanging information about recommended comedy videos, reporting recent news of each others and having silly conversations without doing anything in particular... well, it's really easy to be there with friends who don't need to be serious or not to guard down to each other together.

I'm also grateful for her who take my homebody self out. I usually stay at home all the time unless I have something important to do. I'm so homebody such I wonder if I would be able to keep taking photos in Kabukicho unless she didn't take me out.

Well, actually, the photos used in the recent article of One day＠somewhere and this article have not been pre-processed with noise reduction using PureRAW before development. The photos from Kichijoji in the recent article were taken in broad daylight with the lowest sensitivity of ISO 200, so there shouldn't have been any noise in the first place and I thought there was no need for any post-processing. However, I was shooting with ISO 1600 this time because it was night as usual.

By the way, this photo is a sign of a shop that was built in the location after the dismantling of the Kabukicho mixed-use building fire.

The reason I didn't preprocess with PureRAW this time either. Hmm, simply because it became too much of a hassle to import to my Mac just for preprocessing. I also thought that since the photos were taken with high sensitivity in the dark of night, it was only natural for noise to be present. If it's about I want to beautifully preserve a photo of someone important (like my nephews), the story might be different. Or someone asked me to take a photo of them that I met in the city, it could be.

I'd had wanted to take photos around Ichiban-gai even before I started shooting on this day. Lately, I have been asked by the friend, "Where are you shooting tonight?" quite often, but I usually don't think about it too much beforehand. Then she even gives me ideas like "Why don't you try taking photos around ○○?". And the idea of taking photos around Ichiban-gai was actually an idea that the friend had given me a little while ago.

I think a lot of people tend to imagine Kabukicho as a whole like "It's the city like this" when they think of the city, but even within the Kabukicho area, the atmosphere can completely change with just one street over, actually. This may be a rough explanation, but the further you get away from Shinjuku Station, the more underground atmosphere it has, and it becomes an area that has lost its wholesomeness in various ways, both in a good and bad sense. In that sense, Ichiban-gai is the closest to Shinjuku Station, so I wouldn't say it's wholesome, but there aren't as many underground elements there. That's the impression I have.

Even so, just taking one step into the side alley immediately from the main street Ichiban-gai, brings out a distinctly underground atmosphere. I was taking photos in the Ichiban-gai, but there were too many people so I couldn't take a good one. So in the end, on this day, I ended up taking photos stepping into a narrow alley, just like avoiding people.

Somehow, I took this photo because I was curious about the legs visible under the posters. There's no particular deep meaning in just that. And when I developed this, it wasn't as good as I thought it was when I took them. But since I've taken the one, I still post it.

Well, as you can see from the photos up to this point, I was taking them in the rain, which was alternating between falling and stopping, but finally, the rain started to pour down in earnest.

So, I found shelter from the rain in a late-night cafe that I have been wanting to go back again since the 100th time I went to Kabukicho for shooting, but I hadn't yet.

I was looking at the scenery outside, drinking iced caffee at that cafe. This shop has a great location, and from the large window that spread across the entire wall inside the shop, I can see all the way from the TŌYOKO to Kabukicho Ichiban-gai. Once I change the direction of my view, I can also see the direction of Seibu Shinjuku Station like in this photo. Not only the drinks, but I love everything about this cafe, including the large window that offer a view of the outside scenery and the atmosphere inside. I will definitely come back again.

Taking advantage of the lull in the rain, I returned to the parking lot. Why do I get to want to take photos when there's someone walking in front of me. Well, it won't be 3 weeks later next time to go to Kabukicho, it'll be sooner than that at least.

See you then.