written in the —
We got back from Japan 28 hours ago, and even though I am so unbelievably tired now, even though I was already tired before we left, even though work never quite abated, I am glad for that time away.
A collection of the days past:
1. It is late afternoon and we have walked past too much construction to get to Daikanyama. Before we can get to the main event of books and shopping and architecture, we stop by the Kyu Asakura House. True to reviews, the gardens are beautiful, the home surprising for something in the middle of a very hipster neighbourhood. But it is towards the back of the house where I am besotted by a tiny, nondescript room. I gasp and tell pb how much I love it.
“Congratulations,” she says, pointing to a sign on the ground. “Your favourite room is the storeroom.”
2. In Niigata, I bookmark an art installation housed in a now defunct school that I can’t wait to visit. We have to drive out to see it, and along the way I yap about how meaningful the project is, how sad it is to see a location fall out of use, a community devoid of children. We pull up at the site, pay the entrance fee, and walk in only to spend less than 5 minutes in the space. Fetishistic is the word pb used to describe the work. PARALYSING TERROR more accurately captured my experience.
Before entering the site of trauma — sheer excitement
After 5 minutes inside — 0/10 do not recommend
3. On our last night in Osaka, we head out to a tiny joint for Japanese curry, where soon the salaryman next to me is leaning over with his phone, showing me an Instagram account of a random woman with 38,000 followers… who thankfully turns out to be the wife of the restaurant owner. I am tired and disinterested in making conversation in this muddy zone of basic English/barely Japanese that requires an extraordinary amount of focus, but this fellow diner seems to be capping off a long day at his place of comfort, and the owner is a smiley, jovial, extroverted dude who’s dressed for a beach holiday with a spirit to match. They are warm and beckon with kindness, so I try my best to keep up. I still don’t like curry, but the salad we have ordered is giant and delicious and I am very into it.
I swear this salad was much larger than how it looks here
4. Speaking of salads, oh! How pb indulged my proclivity for fresh vegetables this trip. We had salads almost every day, and although the best thing we ate this time were gyoza that I will probably dream about forever more, this salad mixed and eaten straight out of a hotel ice bucket was, hands down, the next best thing.
Salad in ice bucket, Niigata
Girl with salads, Tokyo
5. At Tower Records in Tokyo, taking in the simple joy of pb surrounded by her first love: music. Watching this one uncle shopper move down the classical music aisle, patiently scanning the shelves, pulling out album after album, studying each one. Being in a space where everyone just wants to listen, not talk.
Days later, in Niigata, pb maps our way to a secondhand clothing store she thinks I would enjoy, but my reading of the map unintentionally lands us at a music store instead, where the tagline seems to be “PUNK SHOP NOT DEAD”. We are both drawn into the space because of the music — in fact, we like the song that is playing so much that she ends up buying the album. The owner of the shop has told her the band is Maki, the name of my cat, which I take to be a sign from the universe.
In the car, driving out to the seaside, we listen to the album once through. I realise the only song I like is the song that was playing in the shop, and I tell her this is the very definition of kismet: a missed turn leading us to the last minute of the last song on the album of a band that shares the name of my cat, of a song that cannot be found anywhere on Spotify or YouTube or the rest of the Internet, it seems. What are the odds? We were destined to be there.
