For old times sake
This train station is the Higashi-Nakano Station on the Sobu Line, the Chuo Line, and the Oedo Subway Line. I never come here. During my first year in Japan I worked at two vocational schools called “senmongakko” near this station and I came here twice a week. On Sunday, January 21st I was passing through and I decided to get off the train and walk around to take a look for the first time in 28 years. For old time's sake. Except for the local shopping street, the "shotengai," everything looks different. (Well, the shotengai looked different, too, but I was glad to find it still there, at least.) First, when I came here regularly the Oedo Subway Line did not exist. Second, the station building has been completed re-made. Third, there are several tall condominium buildings there now which are new, some standing where one of my schools used to be.
I did find one of the schools where I worked, the Japan Hotel School. It must have done well because the two buildings it occupies look new and don't match my memory. The other school was called Travel Journal. They were two separate schools, but related. I did not find the other school, Travel Journal, although I did find another school in the area, nearby JHS, called Trajal Hospitality and Tourism College. Could Travel Journal have changed ownership, changed its name, and changed its location in the neighbourhood?
I've been in Tokyo for 28 years. Holy crap! Imagine someone coming here in 1945, in the ruins of war, and still living here in 1973! I've seen the city change incrementally. Most of the changes are technological and infrastructural. When I came here there was no internet, no Yahoo or Google, no Amazon, no E-mail, blogs, or social media, no cell phones, no iPhones, no Facebook, no digital cameras, no garbage separation and recycling, no 100-yen shops, no Book Off, no Uniqlo. When I arrived the old 500-yen bill was still being used (although it was in its last year of circulation). And the small, crowded, dark Immigration Office was in Otemachi.