Word: asakusa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...always been difficult to separate the reality of Beat's life from his embellishments. Certainly, his depictions of violent yakuza lives are so realistic and tinged with such closely observed comedic touches that it's no surprise to learn that he grew up amid gangsters in his Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo. "I watched yakuza guys getting stabbed in the stomach, punched in the head, all that stuff, ever since I was a kid," he recalls. In Brother there's a scene in a sushi restaurant in which a gangster rams chopsticks up the nostrils of a rival gangster. Then...
...minimum, Tokyo boasts 30,000 establishments where a man or woman can have a drink. Prostitutes used to be everywhere, but a 1958 antiprostitution law scattered them to the winds, except for those who reappeared' as "bar hostesses." In the Ginza, Akasaka, Shimbashi, Shinjuku and Asakusa districts, such swank bars and nightclubs as Le Rat Mort offer unusual entertainment at prices that can be as exorbitant as anywhere in the world...
...time he was twelve, Kikuta had gone through six foster fathers; the last one sold him to an Osaka pharmacist for $50. Escaping, Kikuta finally made his way to Tokyo, landed a job as assistant scriptwriter for a third-rate girlie show in the capital's bawdy Asakusa district. During the war, he spent three months in South China as a historian for the Japanese navy, writing patriotic plays and radio scripts...
...Tokyo the air was softening. It was the time of year when people began to watch for the gentle pink and white rioting of cherry blossoms in the parks. On weekends families would swarm by thousands from the rickety alleys of the Asakusa and Honjo working-class districts, where they had nervously hung blackout shades in their flimsy houses. By foot or bus or train they would take to the parks-to Asakusa, with its booths of cheap souvenirs and its great red temple of Kwannon; to Uyeno, with its museums and galleries; or to Shiba, with its tree-shrouded...
...little Kanda River (2), his Majesty can state as an eyewitness are still flowing. Buds are sprouting in the "Cherry Blossom Parks": Shiba (3), Hibiya (4), Uyeno (5), and Hama Rikyu (6), which is every year the scene of the Imperial Cherry Blossom Garden Party. Different is Asakusa Park (7), a "Coney Island," incongruously surrounding the Sacred Temple of the Goddess of Mercy...