15 Takadanobaba／高田馬場

Takadanobaba is known as a students’ town.  Waseda University and other colleges, professional schools and prep schools are located in this area.  Many students gather in the relatively small square in front of Takadanobaba Station to meet, talk, sing, dance, drink, etc.

More than 30 years ago, I often walked this shopping street to the Student Assistance Association Building where I sought for day labor works (the building was razed and an elderly nursing home sits on the site).  About ten years ago, a Myanmar food restaurant opened in this street by a couple who took part in the democratization movement in Myanmar and moved to Japan in the late 1980s.  Today, two thousand Myanmarese people live in Takadanobaba area, which is sometimes called “Little Yangon”.

When you get off a train at Takadanobaba Station, you hear the music of “Astro Boy” on the platform as the departure bell.  “Astro Boy” is a series of manga and animation published and broadcasted on TV in the 1950s and 1960s.  The author Osamu Tezuka, the legendary manga giant, had his workplace in a quiet residential area in Takadanobaba from 1976 to 1986 and wrote “Phenix”, “Black Jack”, “Buddha”, “Message to Adolf”, “Unico”, “The Three-Eyed One”, etc.

In my view, a students’ town should have at least one movie theater even in this online subscription service generation.  Takadanobaba has a good classic film theater, which was once closed in 2002 but reopened in the next year by the efforts of movie buff students.

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