I change trains three times before boarding one of Tokyo's shortest lines, the 2.5-km Keisei Kanamachi. I'm bound for Shibamata, which isn't precisely a backstreet, but it's tucked so far from most major thoroughfares in the back-beyond of Katsushika Ward that I imagine it will fit the bill.

Once I leave the station's awning, the sun blazes like a Klieg light on a roasting plaza and threatens to melt the bronze statue of Shibamata's favorite son, vagabond salesman Torajiro Kuruma, protagonist of the much-loved "Tora-san" movie series. Directed and written by Yoji Yamada and starring the late Kiyoshi Atsumi, all 48 movies, filmed 1969-95, focus on Tora-san's endearingly flawed life, his ill-fated love affairs, and his periodic visits to his "normal" family members and sleepy hometown of Shibamata on the northeastern edge of Tokyo.

The Shibamata I'm headed toward, then, is both real, and simulacrum. I get a sense of this when I stop in at souvenir shop Tamaya, the sole purveyor in Japan of Tora-san Kewpie dolls. I also note a basket of tawashi (palm-fiber scrubber brushes) generally used to clean vegetables, but here touted as body brushes. "The fibers are softer than usual," the shop-owner assures me, "and the brushes are handmade by a local gentleman, Mr. Sagara, who is in his 70s." I buy one, and ask the shop-owner her name. "Sakura," she says, as though it's her screen name, and her meishi (name card) only carries the single name, too. Maybe it's this oddity, or her oval-faced beauty and down-to-earth energy, that make her seem exactly like the kind of woman Tora-san always loved, but never landed — hence the series title, "Otoko wa Tsurai Yo" ("It's Tough Being a Man").