The slopes run down to the harbour in a grid. Tokawa is a fishing settlement at the eastern end of Chōshi, and its streets fall from the high ground to the port in a regular pattern of straight descending lanes. Because every one of them heads directly for the water, a person carrying a load can take whichever lane is nearest and still reach the quay by the shortest possible route, which is the whole point of the arrangement.

The terminus of the Chōshi Electric Railway stands up on the high ground above the port, so arriving by train means walking downhill to the sea and, eventually, back up again with whatever you have bought. The houses are fishermen's houses: narrow frontages, built with the foundation height adjusted individually to the gradient, so that each floor is level while the street outside is not. Chōshi's town centre is about fifteen minutes away by car, there is work in fishing and in seafood processing, and the wind coming off the sea in winter is serious enough to be a factor in how the houses are built.

Streets in a slope town are laid out according to the weight of what has to be carried. When the priority is minimising the distance from the harbour upward, you do not follow the contours — you run the lanes straight down the steepest line, and accept the gradient. That is why walking here is a good deal harder than it looks on a map, and why the gradients feel arbitrary until you know the reason. The layout was never designed for anybody walking without a load, and nothing about it has been adjusted since.