Tokyo's backstreets can be dank or swank, but on the whole, they're safe. The biggest risk lies in the lure of diversion. Wander off the beaten path on your way to buy eggs or mail a letter, and you'll get sucked in by bizarre Lilliputian entrepreneurships, copper-clad fronts of prewar wooden shacks, or a huge ball of cedar twigs. The eggs? What eggs?
Zooming around Tokyo's swank Aoyama district in a cab one day, I spot a backstreet near the Nezu Institute of Fine Art sporting a sugidama (cedar-twig ball indicating a sake joint), a plethora of little restaurants and oversize statues of Adam and Eve. From the car, this nameless street looks intriguing.
On foot, it turns out to be downright perilous. A nonstop stream of taxis slalom recklessly down this narrow shortcut, starting at the Nezu museum (currently swaddled in blue construction netting until architect Kengo Kuma's new building emerges in autumn 2009) and plummeting downhill, literally and figuratively, from there. I'm forced to dash from one roadside perch to the next, or be crushed.