A rickshaw driver stopped his rickshaw in the town of Asakusa to give sightseeing tours

As I was walking in Asakusa Roku-ward, I saw a line of people on the sidewalk. As I approached, I saw that it was a line of customers waiting in line at a tempura restaurant. There are countless restaurants in the area, but it is rare to see a line of people waiting in line at this time of the day. That must be what makes this tempura restaurant so special. There must be something that can only be experienced here. But what exactly is this “special” thing? But this procession itself seemed to me to be a kind of ritual.

As we stopped in front of the tempura restaurant, a rickshaw suddenly slid in front of us. The rickshawman stopped the rickshaw on the side of the road and began to give a tour guide to the passengers. His movements were fluid, and there was a kind of theatrical elegance in the way he stretched out his left hand and pointed at something. The chauffeur's costume was period, and stood out in the hustle and bustle of the modern world. It was as if they were time travelers who had escaped from the past. His figure stood out from the hustle and bustle of his surroundings and looked like an inhabitant of another world.

At this moment, the place called Asakusa was strangely divided in my mind. One is Asakusa buried in the everyday life of today, and the other is Asakusa mixed with fragments of history and memories. The rickshaw in front of me may have been a presence that blurred the boundaries between the two.

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