polymorphself 

A few months ago I made a post here asking about two bicycles that my aunt had found in my uncles attic in the Bronx after he passed. She sent me some rough photos and one I could see was an Atala, the other I didn't recognize. The headbadge said T.U. and I hadn't seen this before. A quick post here of course turned up that it was a Tsunoda, a bike not so common to find here in the U.S. I guess they are still around to some capacity.

Anyways, that was a few months ago. Tomorrow my aunt will be here in Phoenix and will have both bicycles with her. So I'm in bed doing some searching and I look up the #tsunodabike hashtag on Instagram to see what I can find there. Only 12 photos turned up (although I haven't searched it in Japanese yet). I didn't expect many but I expected more than 12! Anyways, one of the photos immediately caught my eye. "I KNOW this building...", I thought. A few seconds later it dawned on me.

I lived in Japan in 2016 in a very small, more or less rural town outside of Nagoya. We had one subway stop for the town, and that makes it rural in Japan. This building was on the east side of the town and I'd walk by it often when I needed to go to the local department store. You just don't see a lot posted about this town on the internet. It's tiny and rather insignificant by Japanese standards (although a beautiful place to live). So to have this pop up was very striking. This is the photo found by the user on Instagram:



Now, my interest in vintage bicycles, and bicycles in general was just starting around this time, so I never would have thought much about the name, and I don't think I ever actually stopped in. However, upon further recollection I remembered having taken almost this exact same photo. Sure enough I had a look on my computer and found the photo I had taken.



Very uncanny and I had a good laugh at this and just had to post something about it!

Lascauxcaveman 

Small world, eh?


Now I'm wondering what's the story behind the blue tarps hanging down in the window (in your pic)? Hurricane? Earthquake? Payments in arrears to the Yakuza?

polymorphself 

You know that's a good question. If I recall they were always up when I was there, which may be why I never bothered to go in. The other persons photo was taken two years later.

alo

I don't know, but it is probably to provide shade at the time of the day when the sun shines directly in the window.

polymorphself 

that could be! Although if I remember correctly the windows faced north. Still could be though.

alo

If you look at the second picture, there is sunlight shining directly on those windows.