Strolling through the residential backstreets of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, I turn a corner to find a narrow road bursting with food stalls and sake-drinking locals. At center stage is a torii gated neighborhood shrine dedicated to Ebisu, the Shinto god of prosperity. Sandwiched between two micro parking lots, today it is festooned, like the adjoining streets, with festive chochin lanterns to mark one of the city’s most cherished and longstanding celebrations: the Nihonbashi Ebisu-ko Bettaraichi, an annual autumn pickle fair that features hundreds of tented booths selling everything from cold beer and kushiage skewers to the headlining bettara-zuke, or Tokyo-style pickled daikon. Amidst the carnivalesque atmosphere, it’s easy to forget that the surrounding city blocks were not so long ago the financial center of Japan.
Nihonbashi takes its name from the wooden bridge around which it grew
