Old Town: Kawagoe-1

Today's area, Kawagoe is a part of Saitama, the prefecture next to Tokyo. It's famous for preserving various old houses & buildings originally built in 18-19th century. (including much older ones!)

Especially, ”Kurazukuri Street", where the both sides of street are filled with wooden(-looking) architecture, is a huge tourist attraction. 

Based on their original structure & design, they have been beautifully refurbished & occupied by specialty shops, handcrafts sellers or cafes.

Only a few areas in greater Tokyo, like Asakusa or Kamakura, still have amazing vintage vibes like this.

Heavy Duty Guys

In contrast to the wooden ones above, another common style in the architecture there is "Kuradukuri", which looks quite solid & heavy-duty.

Actually, this architectural style is what made this area so popular & famous. It's quite rare to see buildings built with this style at this high density.

Taking a closer look, it's easier to feel how solid it is. The reason why this style became a standard here is because the town had repeatedly suffered from a big fire in its history.

Especially, the one which took place in 1983 burnt out one-third of the town, so the residents had invested a considerable amount of money in building fire-proof houses like this.

Even if you're not a huge archi fan, Japaneseness you wanna feel is definitely there.

To be continued to Ep.2

Thanks for reading.

Kawagoe area, Saitama

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Posted by 3e-Tokyo Project