Dispatch № 43: The Summer Trope
It is a season for the seaside and the mountain stream. A season for eating ice pops while walking over the blistering asphalt of country roads fringed with green foxtail, the green of which has begun to fade to brown.
Dispatch № 42: Chicken and Beer
It was just before Christmas and my friend and I were hanging out in Ikebukuro, an area on the north side of Tokyo. We had been wandering around aimlessly and were outside a convenience store when a man approached us.
Dispatch № 41: An Impossible House by the Sea
There is a derelict house in my old neighborhood that surfaces in my dreams now and then. In reality, it is in Tokyo, boarded up and sitting behind a yard overgrown with tall grass.
Dispatch № 40: Celluloid Time Machine
Rainy season has come early this year, and so has my annual effort to catch up on my undeveloped film. I’m not sure how many rolls there are, but I’d guess about fifty rolls.
Dispatch № 39: Doing Nothing
There are two kittens in the bushes. Both are striped, though the smaller one is half-covered with splotches of white fur, as if it had been interrupted partway through repainting.
Dispatch № 38: As-Is
Many people say they love Japan, but really only love a particular, highly distorted concept of it. They don’t realize it, and they don’t like it when you point it out.
Dispatch № 37: Preoccupied and Waiting
When you take on a project like this after years of barely writing in general, let alone in public, it’s tricky.
Dispatch № 36: Dead Fountains
Admittedly, I have no numbers to back this up, but I would still put forth (with confidence) that Japan is the world leader in disused fountains.
Dispatch № 35: Open Wide
Breeze and birdsong alike flow liquidly, languidly into the apartment through windows thrown open wide to invite the atmosphere in.
Dispatch № 34: Moments in Suspension
Three small children play in a public park sandbox under a cedar tree. The smallest of them is digging a hole with a stick, eschewing the nearby yellow plastic shovel. Two women sit on an adjacent bench. One of them wears a large-brimmed hat.