Month: October 2008

There used to be a blue traffic sign if you drove into Shin Sekai from Namba welcoming you to SIN SEKAI. It might even still be there.
When we were in university there was still an indoor “fishing park,” archery range, and competing all-night dirty film theaters in the immediate vicinity of Tsutenkaku tower. Our first trip there was most notable because on the way to eat kushiyaki we walked right by a big Yak loudly berating and repeatedly slamming a woman against his S-class stopped in the middle of the street. People stopped to watch, but nobody said (much less did) shit – even the security guard standing in a nearby parking lot. It was grimy Osaka as fuck.
Passing through such places at night, you can get a glimpse of the hidden underside of an already dark and foreboding area: The police patrolling the perimeters, but not really entering. A skinny wretch of a dog chained to a seemingly abandoned food stall. The shabu junkies clutching greasy banknotes and buying bags of rock sugar at the corner store.
The greatest Tsutenkaku story I ever heard, though, is that back in the seventies or eighties they had an exhibition in the tower and turned it into a zoo of sorts, with caged animals displayed all the way up the staircase. I would have paid money to see that (Hell, come to think of it, my Crown might have been a taxi cruising the streets of Tennoji back then.).