Somewhere in Japan

Category: Dispatches

Dispatch № 76: Truncated

Photograph showing heavily pruned trees in a park in Saitama City, with a tall apartment block in the background

Even just staring up into the branches was a joy, watching the sky sparkle through shifting gaps in the foliage.

Dispatch № 74: Loud as Flowers

Night photo of kinmokusei blossoms

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 № 73: Zones

Different types of footwear for different parts of the home

My old apartment was simple in this way. Leave your shoes at the door and that’s it. No other changes to make

Dispatch № 72: For a Limited Time

Late afternoon shot showing backlit weeds in an overgrown lot somewhere in Tokyo, Japan

Soft stridulations waft like lithe wisps of wood smoke on the gentle evening breeze, the crickets calling tenderly under the waxing crescent moon.

Dispatch № 71: Troublesome Gaps

Photo of the shopping arcade (shotengai) in Jujo in Kita-ku, Tokyo, Japan

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 № 51: Communal Waters

Night photo showing a small chunk of a building with shoe lockers on one side, all that remained at the time of a the local public bath I used to frequent in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, Japan

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

Dispatch № 49: Hushed

Photo of a Pilot fountain pen resting on a notebook

In relative terms, it’s a cacophony, and it seems so because it has otherwise been so tremendously quiet that minute sounds are magnified.

Dispatch № 48: Lineage

Photo of an old snapshot showing David R Munson as a baby, sitting on the floor with his father on a summer evening in Lubbock, Texas, probably in 1983

Long after the baby has grown into a man, he sits on a bench in a park in Japan, ten thousand kilometers and thirty-nine years from Lubbock.

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