Japanuary IV: RAM

macaques in the hot springs, steam rising into the morning sky above; the groups of uniformed school children waiting for the metro and the question of whether that's called a gaggle, a murder, or a parliament;

the wingding fun of hiragana, the spaceship hebrew of katakana, the electric enigma of kanji;

the perfect serenity of the lone chef of a Kyoto kushiage restaurant, seemingly in absolute repose within himself; a train conductor chanting a song that just came to his mind through the intercom, asking passengers to sing along; the genuine happiness of that izakaya chef when we thanked him for the meal;

the pleasure and consolation of living with cats;

inordinate amounts of listening to Mono and Yellow Magic Orchestra;

the crisp splendour of Japanese etchings and the sublime fogmongering of the ink paintings;

the 7os-ness of rural Japan, the 8os-ness of provincial Japan, the awkward contemporaneity of the capital; the cables and wires (barely) holding Kyoto together; Karuizawa villas on wooden platforms with gravestones in front of them, slowly sinking into the mossy ground; Nagano snow; Fukuoka palm trees in the rain;

the red scream of huge tuna slices lying on ice at a fish market; yakitori stalls bathed in smoke and smell; soda dispensers' neon dashes; the meowing and squealing of Tokyo metro cars telling me how Ghibli came up with the Catbus from Totoro;

Shintō shrines, Buddhist temples, Genshin Impact altars;

blue-tiled roofs, tatami interiors, inner gardens, koi ponds;

Fuji-san in front of a pale blue sky;

watching kabuki and being relieved that the Japanese audience doesn't know either when exactly to applaud; watching Gojira -1.0 in black and white and in Japanese without subtitles, and being terrified and moved in equal measures by what I expected to be merely a B-movie;

the shinkansen dashing out of a tunnel at the perfect moment and a monchrome landscape of factories surrounding a smoke-covered bay suddenly extending before me, just as "Unseen Harbor" moves into its best part (that slow passage in the middle); shinkansen and the shinkansen mindset in general, the brain attuning itself to those peaceful 285 km/h and how they melt and blur the landscape without abandoning or annihilating it – bullet train ukiyo;

the sign warning that getting caught in train doors is "dangerous and embarrassing"; the sign at a marine aquarium advertising "sea trivia"; the sign "how to use a toilet" in a toilet; the sign asking "Why would anyone leave an empty can on a stand ashtray?"; the sign advertising a "Hands-on Guinea Pig Class";

the word kawasemi (カワセミ, 'kingfisher'); the penguin on the public transit card;

learning perhaps, in Western Japan, why those J-horror films that were all the rage in the 00s were so absolutely soaked in water (Ring and its well; Loft and its pond; Dark Water and its dark water) – why not derived from these towns, where it seems like no surface was every truly dry in the past five decades, with it raining through the winter and then going into 99% air humidity in the summer, where it seems like the water damages came first and the houses were constructed into them afterwards?;

learning that the length of the final 'e' in irasshaimase (roughly: "welcome, customer") is indirectly proportional to the reputation of the establishment, with representants of cheap drugstores and izakayas turning it into what is basically a diphtong;

learning that when you push the 'help' button at a metro ticket machine, a little window next to it opens and an actual human being sticks their head out like a modern-form rokurokubi;

sitting in a two-story onsen by night and watching the faintly illuminated treetops, level with myself, like a higher form of cinema; sitting in another onsen and feeling the snow fall on my head and the hot rocks behind me;

the baseball field by the river that you pass by when taking the Narita Express to or from the airport – a yellowish-green oblong shape, always populated, always alive;

Chinese takeaway, corner pizza, shinkansen sando, grilled fish, fried oysters, dried squid, raw mussels, pickled onions, hokkaido yoghurt, carrot dressing, melon bread, popcorn; mushrooms for breakfast; beer actually served cold; yuzu soda; matcha;

flying squirrels, porcelain owls, beach cats