Last year, I had the chance to spend a lot of time in the Kyoto-Osaka region. Meandering through the backstreets of Kansai, it's impossible not be enchanted by the nostalgic embrace of the Showa era, encapsulated in the fading, yet vibrant signs of vintage shops and local businesses. This is vividly evident in the vintage signs of shops and the façades of local enterprises, still radiant even as they fade. It is something that you see less and less here in Tokyo, unfortunately. These facets of urban Japan precariously balance on the brink between memory and the contemporary world. These places to me are more than mere relics but beautiful scars of urban evolution, the fascinating marks of time that tell the tale of a Japan that once was, and still is, in the quiet moments if one simply takes the time to look.