Bus Stop

A few weeks ago, my dear friend Lee and I spent a few days traveling through an area of Japan, under the excuse of scouting locations where, this autumn, we will be accompanying a group of photographers interested in what we do.

Just today I found myself looking again at the photographs I brought back from that trip. From there, a thought resurfaced — one that had been lingering in my mind for several days.

As we moved away from the metropolis, we encountered many places that seem to no longer have a human presence. I would call them abandoned, but are they really?
In Japan, you can find a bit of everything. Even in the most remote areas, it’s not unusual to come across large structures that have been left behind, suspended in time. Much of this is probably a consequence of the economic bubble that burst in the early 1990s: what had been built during a period of expansion was no longer sustainable in the long run.

And yet, I have to admit it, these places deeply fascinate me. I like seeing them, walking through them, photographing them. They give me a feeling similar to leafing through an old photo album. My mind drifts back to times that no longer exist, and I often find myself imagining the stories of these places, now dominated by the passage of time and by nature slowly reclaiming its space.

Faded logos on old signs, yellowed and worn-out curtains, colors that were fashionable decades ago, architectures that today feel improbable. Places that once buzzed with life and are now immersed in a kind of silence and stillness.

In recent days, more than once, I found myself stopping — even if only for a moment — inside a large department store, crowded, alive, noisy, and imagining it as one of those places: once equally full of people, movement, voices… and then, one day, empty. Silent. Left behind.

During our small journey we encountered many such places.
Today I want to write about one that surprised me a little more than the others.

We came across it by chance, near an intersection. It appeared out of nowhere, caught by the corner of my eye, the way certain things do when you don’t immediately understand them. A strange, undefined shape. Was it a house? Was it a bus?

I stopped. I reversed a few meters, parked the car, and walked closer to take a better look.

A restaurant, probably. The outdoor seating area was set inside a bus, around which the building itself had been constructed.
Yes, a real bus. With an actual engine.

An object out of scale, out of time, wedged there as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I stood there for a while, trying to imagine the exact moment when someone thought this was a good idea. And, above all, the period when it truly was.

What can you say, if not: long live the 1980s.