ABSTRACT
The front window of the grocery store in the Japanese alley is full of community messages, and another brick wall inside has more, advertising a Japanese vet, and yoga and karate classes (Image 7.1). At the back of the store, however, past the bags of mugicha, the bottles of Kikkoman soy sauce and Kyūpī mayonēzu, the home-made Japanese sweets (sakura mochi, daifuku), the fridge with natto and bento, the bigen hair dye and hokkaron hot patches, the daikon radishes and rice cookers, is a glassed-in store room, a space created to protect the writing on the wall (Image 7.2). In large white letters on the painted red brick wall is written: ‘P R Cook & Co Estate Agents.’ Below that in different lettering: ‘The South British Insurance Co Ltd, Fire, Accident, Workers Compensation.’ 1 These advertisements date from an era when white-letter signs on brick walls were a common mode of advertising. This building was constructed in 1924 – along with the other surrounding buildings – by Phillip Robert Cook, who used it as an estate agent’s premises until 1944 (Heritage Report, 1998).
