Jimbocho book shops

Today, went with a colleague from Temple and we browsed the book shops in the Jimbocho area. I read somewhere that it is the biggest book market area in the world. I don't know if that's true or not but it certainly has a bewildering amount of book shops. It's interesting, walking around and browsing books, whose covers I can't read. At times, I was simply attracted to the jacket design and picked up whatever looked visually interesting. Saw an amazing shop with original ukiyo-e prints. Really beautiful but also very expensive. Although I'm sure these same prints would cost even more outside of Tokyo. Still, it was great to be able to actually hold the original prints and leaf through them. I wondered as I walked around, if this area was destroyed during the fire-bombing raids in WW2? I'm sure it was. I can't even begin to imagine what treasures must have gone up in flames. But then again, I suppose that can be said of most wars, unfortunately. One thing that we also noticed was how each shop seemed to cram books into every little available space. Books went right up to the ceilings and aisles were narrow and sometimes difficult to navigate. I took this picture in one shop that was floor to ceiling in all these books, relating to? Well, I don't know actually. But that was the fun of it in a way.