Culture

Photographing Tokyo's Coolest Escalators

Miha Tamura captures the extraordinary side of this everyday ride.

Of all the transport modes in the city, escalators probably get the least amount of love. Elevators go much higher much faster. Trains go much farther (and are much prettier). Subways carry more people more places. If you think anything when they think about escalators, you probably wonder why they're always broken.

The Tokyo-based blogger Miha Tamura is on a mission to rescue the escalator from urban transport obscurity. At her site, Tokyo Escalator, Tamura tries to capture the extraordinary side of this everyday ride. Despite its name, the site also features cool escalators from other Japanese cities, as well as a few from other parts of the world.