Dispatch № 74: Loud as Flowers

You feel you are swimming in a saturated, soporific concoction of apricot, honey, and hypnagogia, with undercurrents of the autumn sun’s penetrating warmth.

Dispatch № 71: Troublesome Gaps

While it is entirely possible that, by the time we visit again, new buildings and businesses will occupy those spaces, it is also possible that they will remain empty for a long while.

Dispatch № 65: I Am a Visitor Here

Not a fish out of water, but a fish temporarily in the wrong body of water. I’m a trout in a tide pool.

Dispatch № 60: Skyglow

Many years later, I laid down and gazed up from the floor of the Gobi Desert, a place with a sky so dark that the Milky Way practically slaps you in the face. There’s no missing it.

Dispatch № 57: Glitch

The world vibrated and sang for a brief time, and there was a sense of building pressure, as when one dives deep underwater.

Dispatch № 53: A Reliable Bubble

The same elevator music as ever. The same door chime. The same fluorescent light making everything shadowless and tinged slightly green.

Dispatch № 51: Communal Waters

Third places are important, but some are disappearing, public baths among them. This is one aspect of Japan’s declining social capital.

Dispatch № 46: Offerings

There was no way to know who had left them or why. No way to know if the offerings had been made for children who had been saved, or lost, or perhaps hoped for by would-be parents.

Dispatch № 45: Repeater

So why would I choose not only to board the train when I don’t really need to, but also remain in my seat for at least one full trip around the loop?

Dispatch № 44: Shuttered

The shutters came down, and the customers stopped coming, but life continued inside.