I'm happy to see that National-Panasonic TV in one piece, amid all the rubble. I wonder if it still works.
Looking at those pictures, I couldn't help but wonder what a fun, vibrant place that bowling center must have been in its heyday, and when it was new. IMO, it probably could have held its own against most 1970s US lanes.
I did not realize that such expressions as "F--- you" had gone international as early as the seventies. Hmmm. Makes one wonder what has happened to the world in the last 30-odd years.
I hate to think what new slang phrases may appear as graffiti on walls of abandoned buildings 30 years from now.
Having grown up in the suburbs of Cleveland (never lived in the city itself), I haven't had much of a chance to do much (if any) urban exploration. However, I have seen pictures, on television and elsewhere, of abandoned buildings, many once very elegant and well-built, now in ruins, much as the Tokyo bowling center under discussion here. The elementary school in the suburb in which I grew up was one such building. It was constructed in 1959 and was very well maintained, but declining enrollment and other issues forced it to close in the early 1980s. It was used as a senior citizens' center until about five years ago, then it was torn down. Now, all that's left of that once magnificent (by late 1950s standards) building is...nothing. I am told (I haven't seen the building since I moved away nine years ago) there is now just a vacant lot where the school my friends and I went through 1st through sixth grade together (from 1962-'68) once stood.
Sad. Very sad.