35°51’04.9″N 139°39’16.3″E

Slipping on my hanten¹ and loosely tying the front is now second nature. I barely even notice having done it. I sit on the floor and extend my legs under the skirt of the kotatsu², but do not turn it on. I am warm enough without it. On the edge of the table is a small, battery-powered camping lantern. In my lap, a notebook. In my hand, a fountain pen, the gold nib of which, like the wet lines of ink that trail from its tip, glistens in the lantern’s light.

To my right, a sleeping cat. He stirred briefly when I sat down, blinking slowly as he evaluated me, before settling in again. His right front leg is extended toward me. His soft little paw, with the tufts of fur between the toes, is just barely touching my leg. The touching is intentional, I am sure.

After 90 minutes of reading and no sleep, I came out here to write. Though I would prefer sleep, I am glad, at least, to enjoy this special quiet that only exists in the dead of the night.

The only sounds I hear are the noise of the pen on the paper and the cat’s occasional long, happy exhalations as he sinks comfortably into a freshly adjusted position, continuing to sleep more happily than I think I ever will.

35°51’04.9″N 139°39’16.3″E

About thirty years. That’s the average lifespan of a house in Japan. The day a new home is finished is the day it begins depreciating. Within twenty years or so, the value of the structure will be zero¹.

Houses are essentially viewed as disposable², and the market for used houses is virtually nonexistent.

In cities, where demand for housing is high, there is a pattern of demolition and rebuilding. Property prices can be extremely high, and people also want to minimize their tax liability, so a site formerly occupied by a single house is commonly divided into three or four plots, on each of which will be built a tall, narrow house.

Within three blocks of my apartment, I can think of at least twenty houses that have been demolished in the three years that I’ve lived here. Every house that’s disappeared has been in perfectly good condition. Every one of them was replaced with multiple new houses crowded into the same lot.

Outside the cities, though, huge numbers of houses sit vacant. Some are simply abandoned, while others are still owned by the families of deceased relatives who are unsure what to do with them. Others still are owned by municipalities and are available for sale, but would-be home buyers are largely uninterested.

A few months back, we spent a weekend in Yokosuka, a city on the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture. There, the hills were littered with empty houses. We met a local photographer who had bought one of these houses from the city for about a million yen³ and restored it himself. He was kind enough to give us a tour. It was the most comfortable and charming home I’ve ever entered in Japan.

For us, it was an inspiration. We are planning our exodus.

Perhaps to Yokosuka, or maybe to Hanno, Sayama, or Chichibu. Maybe to somewhere near Kawagoe or to Komoro.

If I changed jobs and worked myself nearly to death, it’s possible we could eventually buy a house in or near to Tokyo. One of those bland new structures on a postage-stamp lot with a forty-year mortgage.

Or, we could start our own small businesses, buy one of these older houses in the relative countryside for next to nothing, and build our lives there.

I find this to be a simple choice to make.

35°39’43.8156″N 139°43’53.2128″E

Yesterday was my last day of work at the English-teaching Job I’ve had since May 2015. Or, it would have been, had they given me any classes. Instead, I got my farewell, a final middle finger, in the form of an empty schedule.

Over the last year, while COVID-19 gutted class volume, a lot of my work days were marked EDO on the daily schedule emails I receive. This stands for emergency day off, the company’s shorthand for “we don’t have any classes for you, so you can stay home and content yourself with 60% of your normal pay.”

I get it. The pandemic has been awful for business. There simply haven’t been enough classes to go around. I’m glad they could at least pay the 60% on the days when they couldn’t supply us with enough work.

But I also know that they wouldn’t even offer us that if they weren’t legally obliged. They already pay teachers the lowest they legally can, after all.

I should have left years ago, but I didn’t. The similarities between working for that company for so long and staying in previous, emotionally abusive romantic relationships are notable. I’m glad I’m done with that place, but feel a fool for having stayed so long.

When my schedule for February 4 arrived marked EDO, it felt like a parting shot. It never mattered that I worked there, least of all in the end.

I’d like to have said goodbye to my friends, though.

35°44’6.4032″N, 139°37’11.2764″E

It’s like an impossibly large machine has just switched on, far enough away that the actual noise of it is gone, but the low rumble of its vibrations carry through the ground and into your body.

When it happens, you’re not sure whether you’re feeling it or hearing it. Somehow, it’s both, and it’s building.

This doesn’t last very long—only a second or two—and then the shaking begins.

The building’s wooden frame groans and chatters as it shifts abruptly. The drinking glasses on the shelf clink together rhythmically, and the water in the cat’s dish sloshes gently against the sides. The light above the table swings pendulously, its cord squeaking in the socket. Below it, the cup full of chopsticks rattles.

When the movement subsides, the apartment resumes its former hush, and the soundscape returns to ordinary patterns with the neighbor’s water heater cycling on and the cat begging for food, unimpressed by the quake.

35°43’37.2144″N, 139°36’52.6752″E

When we no longer need something, we stop paying attention to it. And when we stop paying attention to it, it begins to fade out in our active awareness. In time, it may become wholly invisible, transparent to the point of vanishing, despite not having actually changed.

This is a sort of inattentional blindness on the part of the observer.

With phones in the pockets of nearly everyone now, pay phones are vestigial organs of the urban organism. They’re tools of communication set fast in place, left over from a time before telephones learned to grow legs and walk around.

But in Japan, even in 2021, there are many more pay phones around than you’d expect, and their apparent quantity balloons wildly once you pay attention to them.

In 2015, I took a picture of a telephone booth in a small park near my old apartment. I liked the way its glow illuminated the tree next to it.

After I developed the film and finished the image, it occupied my mind persistently. It compelled me to seek out and photograph other phone booths with regularity.

I’m still photographing them. Every time I see one I like, no matter where I am, I take a picture with my phone and save the location for reference, with the sincere hope that I’ll be able to return later with a tripod and proper camera.

When I talk about this fascination with people in Japan, they’re surprised I can find any to photograph. I haven’t seen one in years, they’ll say, just before I point out the one in front of the building that they’ve walked past dozens of times.

After these conversations, I’ve had some people remark that they’ve begun to see phone booths everywhere they go. They say this with some amount of amazement, as if I’d caused phone booths to sprout like bamboo shoots back into the world.

If thousands of telephone booths can go from invisible to everywhere without actually changing, just imagine what else we’re not seeing, simply because we’ve never thought to look for it.

To see images from my ongoing personal project photographing telephone booths, please see the gallery on my main site: Fade Out (davidrmunson.com).

35°47’20.709″N, 139°9’20.0124″E

Normally, this road would be busy with weekend visitors, but today it feels as if we have the mountain nearly to ourselves. For this, I can thank the weather.

The canopy of the forest is dense and the understory only sparsely populated with smaller plants. Even on a sunny day, this place would be fairly dark. And on this day, thick cloud has encased the mountain, filling the space between the trees with a heavy fog that eats up light and sound. It is a murky, dimly lit world where trees recede into an indistinct distance and the forest is holding its breath.

Halfway up the mountain road, we stop to take a rest. We are surrounded by cedar trees large enough that we’d need a third person if we wanted to put our arms all the way around the trunks.

On the top of this mountain, there is a shrine that’s been there for centuries and has a history much older than the buildings themselves. It’s one of the rare place where they practice futomani, an ancient form of divination. Thought to go back to the Jomon period, it involves heating the shoulder blade of a stag until it cracks, and reading the lines thus created.

Farther down the mountain, there are neither ancient shrines nor burnt stag bones. There are only the massive trees, the road, and the two of us, feeling tiny amongst towering cedars, cloaked in silence.

35°51’12.0″N 139°39’18.8″E

There are many rabbits in this place. It is a shrine dominated by them. Some of them are doing jobs more commonly held by foxes or lion-dogs, while others hide in corners of carvings or sit under shelters, relaxing in their old age.

A family of rabbits stands guard at the entrance, flanking the path and keeping watch from above. Another, much larger rabbit sits patiently above a carved stone trough filled with cold, clear water.

The water that flows from this rabbit’s mouth is used to cleanse and purify. Early in the morning, when most people are still asleep, the shrine is hushed, and the flow of the water joins the rustle of the trees to gently fill the air with sound.

Every day, people come to be purified with this water and to pray. On some days, only a few dozen come. On festival days, throngs of thousands too numerous to count crowd and jostle one another.

One by one, they pick up long-handled dippers and scoop water from the trough. They rinse their hands and their mouths with it, before continuing on to the worship hall to pray.

At every hour, by daylight and starlight alike, the rabbits watch over this place. Humans come and go, and appear to run the shrine, but in the end it belongs to the rabbits.

The shrine near my apartment is Tsuki Shrine, or Tsuki Jinja. Though written with different kanji, this tsuki (調)and the word for moon (月) are homophones. Japanese folklore includes the story of the rabbit in the moon, which (as best I can tell) is how this shrine wound up with rabbits instead of the much more common foxes or dogs. It is my favorite shrine, and the rabbits are one of my favorite things about it.

The featured image of this post is available as a print. Get a 50% discount off list price with the code “SOMEWHERE” at checkout.

35º44”57.27’N 139º44”44.45’E

1. Lifting

If a train is crowded enough, there can be a phenomenal amount of physical pressure exerted on standing passengers. On three different occasions, my feet have lost contact with the floor of a train due to the pressure of the shifting mass of bodies as we rounded a curve.

2. Commuting in Parallel

In Tokyo, there are often trains running on parallel tracks. At times, you can see clearly into the next train as it runs next to yours at the same speed, just a few meters away. You sometimes make eye contact or notice interesting things about the strangers in the other train as they look back at you. Nobody ever waves.

3. Flipped Relationships

Sometimes I can’t quite make it to my desired car on the train before the doors close, so I get on and begin walking down the length of the train on the inside. If I’m walking opposite the direction the train is travelling, there is a brief moment when it begins moving that I am walking forward but the platform out the window seems stationary, giving the curious sensation that the floor is travelling beneath me, rather than me travelling across it.

4. The Mountain

From where I live in Saitama Prefecture, Mt Fuji is sometimes visible. You need clear weather, though, and you need an elevated position. Most of the time, if I can glimpse the mountain, it’s from the train as I commute into Tokyo. I consider a clear sighting as a good omen for the day.

35°51’13.2228″N 139°39’23.529″E

There is a bench that I think of as my bench, in a park that I think of as my park. If I am not at home, not at work, and not walking around, there’s a good chance I’m sitting on my bench.

I first visited the park nearly six years ago, on the day I moved to Japan. A friend brought there me to join an evening cherry-blossom party. Several years later, when I moved from Tokyo to Saitama, I realized happily that it was only a two-minute walk from my new home.

I go there nearly every day, whether to read, to write, or just sit and let the world do what it will as I watch. It does a lot, but what I most enjoy in the park is to see the different categories of people who cycle through the park as the day progresses.

Retirees do calisthenics in groups early every morning. Preschool classes and mothers with young children arrive in the mid-morning or early afternoon, playing cheerfully and sprinting across the open spaces with glee.

Dogs and their humans congregate in the early evening. In the late evening, couples and exhausted office workers alike steal a few quiet moments before heading home.

You’re apt to find me there at any time when I don’t have good reason to be anywhere else. Usually, I’ll have with me something to read, a notebook, and a pen, though sometimes they just sit by my side. The park is diversion enough on its own.

35°44’22.8768″N 139°36’15.6708″E

The last Saturday of May 2016. It is after midnight, and the two sounds most prominent to me in this moment are the hum of narrow, high-pressure tires on smooth asphalt and the soughing of the balmy, late-spring air flowing gently past my ears. I am keenly aware of the hush of my surroundings as I roll slowly, meanderingly through my neighborhood in the dead of the night.

Back in university, as a visualization to help me focus on my goal of living in Japan, I imagined and wrote a scenario very similar to this. The bicycle is a bit different, owing to a decade of evolving tastes, and I’m in Nerima rather than Shinjuku, but the impulse and action at the heart of it are the same.

In the right circumstances, riding a bicycle may become trancelike. The machine below you becomes a transparent conduit for a singular physical experience that is something like a flow state.

For me, this means riding late at night when the streets are empty. This means riding at a deliberately slow speed. And finally, this means doing so on a track bike.

One gear, so no shifting. No freewheel, so no coasting. Your legs are how you go and how you slow. It is the simplest, most direct experience available on two wheels.

I have no destination, just an urge to be in motion. I follow no particular route, though I nearly always turn in the direction of any cats I see crossing the street. I stick to the smallest, quietest roads I can find and continue until the urge to move transitions into an urge to be still.

On this night, I eventually find myself lying still on a park bench just a short distance from my apartment, watching the daphne-scented wind blow a zelkova’s branches to and fro, showing and hiding Orion’s belt behind fresh spring leaves.

35°51’04.9″N 139°39’16.3″E

I need faster shoes. Not shoes that make me faster at running or anything like that, but shoes that are faster to put on and (especially) to take off. Living in Japan, I often have to remove my shoes, and if you’re waiting for me, I feel bad for you.

Part of the problem is that my manual dexterity goes out the window when untying shoes under pressure. It’s as if my hands turn into clumsy, Johnny Tremain fleshmittens and perfectly normal knots go all Gordian for no apparent reason.

If I enter the apartment before my girlfriend, for example, she is left to stand there watching me fumble in the entryway under duress until I give up and just pry off my still-tied shoes.

On top of that, I rarely remember to untie them after taking them off, so the awkwardness of waiting on shoelace bungling is simply delayed until departure time, often with the additional pressure of having a train to catch (for which I’m already at risk of being late).

I have one pair of slip-on shoes and some sandals, but those will only get me so far in daily life. I’ve considered replacing the laces on some shoes with elastic to affect a sort of slip-on conversion, but I’ve had this idea for years and I still haven’t done it.

Loafers are theoretically an option, or at least would be, if they weren’t clearly outside my sartorial Overton window.

Boots that zip are automatically out, as well. Much as I dislike being awkward and slow, it’s still better than accepting any shoe with a zipper, a feature no shoe should have.

I think about this intensely, but only in the moment, forgetting about it soon after entering my apartment. There are solutions, but they require going to the store, and right now I don’t feel like putting on shoes.

35°44’37.84″N 139°36’48.89″E

If ghosts exist, I am likely in their midst, sitting as I am between the main hall of a seventeenth-century Buddhist temple and the large cemetery just next to it. If they’re here, though, they’re not letting on.

The ghostliest things here are the plum blossoms, which I know aren’t glowing, but all the same somehow seem to be transmitting from within the moonlight falling on them from above. Behind them, everything recedes quickly into blackness. And in front of them, the stone pavers of the walkway shine clearly.

I have been sitting here in the darkness, in the dead of night, for about thirty minutes now. There are no lights on anywhere nearby, and most of the ambient light is coming from the moon. I knew where to sit and could find the place easily enough, despite the darkness, because I had made a plan in daylight to visit these blossoms on a clear night if I could.

Our eyes will adapt much better to very low light than we might expect. They need time, is all.

After 10 minutes in the dark, I could already make out my surroundings more clearly. Now, after half an hour, what I see before me seems much more like a painting than the material world I know it to be.

Moonlit surfaces reveal contours of temple buildings that I had never noticed in daylight. The stone lanterns and statues lining the path seem poised to come alive.

The trees rustle quietly in the cold breeze and sway ever so slightly, whispering something I am not wise enough to understand. Or maybe I simply don’t know the language. It’s entirely possible that they are murmuring with the nearby dead.

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NB: If you like this post’s image, you can buy a print of it here. Use code “awesome” for 40% off at checkout.

35°50’57.32″N, 139°39’14.13″E

Air is only visible to us through its interactions with the world. We all know the sound of the wind in the trees and the gentle swaying of branches. We see ripples on ponds and watch autumn leaves swirling on blustery days.

But even when the air is still, we can find physical evidence of it all around us.

As water evaporates after a summer rain, it leaves fugitive, mottled patterns on streets. Or on a winter’s day, we may notice the pronounced depth of a snowdrift on the leeward side of a building.

Of particular interest to me, though, is the way in which plants, overhanging concrete walls, scribe arcs upon them through repeated movements brought on by the wind.

Though this sort of thing must occur everywhere in the world, I first noticed it in Japan. You see it on the walls containing highways and train tracks, and on retaining walls in residential areas. Even in automotive tunnels, where plants have somehow successfully grown in drainage holes, only to be whipped about by the gusts caused by passing cars.

They remain after the plants have gone, too. After every effort by maintenance teams to clean up rogue vegetation, arcs and circles remain traced on the walls, time shadows of plants that are no longer there.

A print of this image is available in the print store. Get 40% off your order with the code “awesome” at checkout.

35°51’04.9″N 139°39’16.3″E

A long metal pole has invaded my living room on several occasions. Supported with a camera tripod on one end and a light stand on the other, it is always festooned with sodden garments that didn’t make it inside before the rain arrived.

Normally, freshly washed clothes go from the washing machine directly out to dry on the two long poles that, under normal conditions, run the length of our balcony. This is true all year round, and there is no dryer, so there is no real alternative.

However, Japan gets rain with a regularity that often makes drying laundry a challenge, sometimes requiring creative problem solving (such as using my photo equipment for laundry purposes).

And besides checking the weather forecast for all the usual reasons, I check it daily to help me better plan my laundry strategy in the immediate future.

Many questions come with this.

Any good laundry days coming up? Any in a row? Will the towels have enough time to dry before the next rain? What are the chances that the approaching typhoon arrives early and my underwear winds up in the neighbor’s tree again?

Air-drying your laundry has its advantages, despite the relative inconvenience of it. Aside from rainy season, when things can develop a bit of a funk, your laundry pretty much always smells good. It also puts far less wear on your clothes than a tumble dryer. Lower energy bills, to boot.

Still, dryers are convenient, and if I ever achieve the sort of success that might prompt someone to do something like upgrading their car, I might instead buy a dryer. Not to use very often, but to have on hand for extended wet periods and typhoons.

And, you know, to keep my underwear out of the trees.

35°51’04.9″N 139°39’16.3″E

On Tuesday at 4:56 AM, an earthquake woke us. Not especially strong, but it seemed to last a long time. I reached over, took Mayumi’s hand, and we laid there wondering how long the shaking would continue.

Just after that, I could hear the sounds of my neighbor and his girlfriend speaking through the bedroom wall. The thinness of the wall might be surprising elsewhere, but seems the norm in so many buildings in Japan.

My next door neighbor is present in my life in a strange, faceless way. We’ve lived next to one another for about two years, and while we’ve crossed paths a few times near the building, it’s usually at night and with masks on.

I couldn’t tell you how tall he is or how he usually dresses, aside from the standard salaryman suit on work days, and definitely couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.

Every day, though, I am aware of when he’s engaged in certain activities. I can hear the kitchen fan when he cooks, and the hum of the vacuum when he cleans.

A great deal can be surmised based on the muffled sounds transmitted through a thin, uninsulated wall.

I can hear his cat mewing for attention late in the evening. His curtains make a sharp rattling sound when he opens them enthusiastically in the morning. His iPhone alarm tone is the same as what I used to use. He has a peculiar sneeze.

My mind tries to construct an understanding of his personality and habits from these and other fragments. They are a strange assortment, though. I have many questions that will probably never be answered, and I can only assume that he also has unanswered questions and curious notions about me.

35.7395337, 139.6144509

Last summer, they canceled all the local festivals because of the pestilence at large. Though vaccinations are happening now in Japan, it’s slow going, and I suspect summer festivals will fall victim to the plague for a second year.

Unlike last year, though, when I just sat glumly at home, wishing I had something festive to attend, this year I will take matters into my own hands. I will make my own fun.

Festivals are reliably lovely and are my favorite cultural events of the year. The atmosphere is wonderful. There’s the food, the games, and the happy people, many of whom are wearing yukata¹ or jinbei². These are garments I sincerely believe look great on everyone, and festivals are when you see them most.

But if there are no festivals? Well then, fine. I’ll make my own surrogate festival-like experience on a personal scale.

On some balmy summer evening, I will arrive in the park just as the sun sets, well-equipped to enjoy myself.

I will drape the picnic blanket over a stone wall under a young maple tree. From one a branch, I will hang my camping lantern, which will stand in for a paper lantern. Suitable music will play on my phone at a low volume.

Next, food. I’ll prepare yakisoba ahead at home and buy karaage³ from the nearby convenience store. Takoyaki⁴ will come from the stand near the station, and maybe even some taiyaki⁵ to round things out.

These will be accompanied by cans of Asahi Super Dry, kept extra cold on ice.

But most importantly, seated next to me will be Mayumi, both of us wearing our yukata for the occasion. And while there will be no festival for us this year, we can at least remember past festivals enjoyed together and let those happy memories enrich our own small tribute to a great summer tradition.

Indulge me, if you would, and let me have a bit of an aside for today’s entry. The last couple of weeks have been incredibly intense and have contained both some of the most trying and most amazing moments of my life. The outlook was especially grim just over two weeks ago, but is much, much better now.

Still, there’s still so much work to do, and I’m doing the dance one does when keeping burnout at bay, while also doing my best to amplify newfound hope. The next handful of weeks involve me needing to get my taxes filed properly in Japan and, even more complicatedly, apply for my new work visa. All of this is turning out to be much more complicated than it was five years ago when I last renewed, and it’s a major drain.

I started this project with the sense that it would be a good way to get back into a consistent writing practice. This is something I need for my long-term plans, my work, and my general life satisfaction.

It has already become highly stimulating and generative, and I can feel the writing part of my creativity getting back into shape. I’m looking forward to the end of the year, when I can look back at having successfully written all 105 posts.

This week, though, I am exhausted and stretched ever-so thin. I had some drafts, but none were very good, so instead of any of those, let me take this opportunity to thank you for your time and attention. Thank you for your encouragement and support. Thank you for the opportunity to have an audience as I make the effort to get my creative life back on track through this practice.

I am here in Japan to build an interesting life, and your being part of my audience is something that helps me get where I’m trying to go. Thanks for that.

36°3’56.286″N 140°113’15.078″E

Sitting on the beach near the campground, the coarse gravel cold and damp beneath me, watching the little waves lapping the lakeshore. Houses and other buildings dot the far edge of the inlet, with clusters of lights leading off into the darkness.

A peaceful setting, but something feels strange. If I pay attention to ambient noises, what I hear most are the small sounds of the water, the wind rustling the tall grasses to my left, and a violent, gasoline-fuelled roar at a moderate distance.

Imagine a man on a highly customized motorcycle revving his engine rhythmically, swerving about the road, making a point of being as loud and disruptive as possible. Now imagine dozens of such men, perhaps even a hundred or more, all doing this together.

These are the bosozoku. Written 暴走族, the first two kanji indicate running out of control, while the third indicates a tribe. A tribe of young men running out of control on their motorcycles.

You won’t see sizeable groups of them in areas like Tokyo anymore, but they’re still out there in other places. In Ibaraki Prefecture, for example, where I am.

One of the other guys saw them when he went out, said there were at least a hundred of them in this marauding gang cruising around, taunting the police. Every once in a while, the police fire up their sirens and the engine noises cease. Only for only a few minutes, though, and then it all ramps up again. They’ve been doing this for hours.

At close to eleven in the evening, it finally stops in earnest. All fun eventually wears thin, and even motorcycle gangs eventually get tired.

When this happens, I am still near the water, writing in my notebook in the lantern light. The bosozoku are done for the night and the wind has died down. What I am left with are just the little wet sounds of the lake meeting its shore and my pen meeting the paper.

Six years I’ve been in Japan. This last Wednesday was my sixth Japaniversary. Rather than reflect on the occasion in my usual way, though, I thought I’d explore that time through numbers.

Some of the following figures are exact. Some are approximate. A few are facetious. I’ll leave it to you to consider which figures fall into which category.

Six years in Japan, 2015-03-31 through 2021-03-31, described through various figures, presented here in no particular order whatsoever.

• Days since I moved to Japan: 2,194
• Days I’ve regretted it: 0
• Portion of my life now spent living in Japan: 15.3%
• Small crushes, largely on attractive strangers: 172,956
• First dates: 55
  • First dates in just the summer of 2016: 36
• Friends gained from attempted dates via dating apps: 3
• Dates with known celebrities: 1
• Broken hearts received: 3
• Broken hearts given: 1
• People I went out with more than 3 times: 4
• Engagement rings purchased: 1
• Proposals accepted: 1
• Trips to the beach at Tsujido: 9
• Calories consumed at GoGo Curry: 72,000
• Steps taken: 32,400,000
  • Approx distance: 20,380km (12,634 mi)
  • Canvas sneakers worn out over that distance: 19 pair
• Hours spent teaching: 8,700
• Amount spent on wine by VIP client while out to dinners together: ¥7,500,000
• Bikelore cycling events attended: 14
• Days of work missed due to illness: 3
• Rolls of film shot: 460
• Cumulative kilometers travelled on trains while commuting: 54,000km (33,480 mi)
  • Times around the Earth that equals: 1.35x
  • Number of cricket bats it would take, lined up end-to-end, to equal that distance: 62,528,949
• Cumulative time spent commuting: 4 months, 28.5 days
• Apartments occupied: 2
• February 29^ths: 2
• Hamsters cared for: 2
• Cats adopted: 1
• Times the above cat has pooped on the floor because he has anxiety: 280
• Neighborhood cats befriended: 100
• Cameras, knives, etc purchased at flea markets or junk shops and restored: 5
• Onigiri eaten: 625
• Photographs taken: 85,000
• Kanji learned: 600
• Notebooks filled: 110
• Coins thrown into the box at various shrines: 460
• Lists like this made so far: 1
• Times I’ve forgotten to send a new post as a newsletter: 1

35°19’10.43″N, 139°26’37.05″E

If you grew up near the ocean, you likely take its presence for granted, in a way that you wouldn’t if you grew up far inland, where its existence seemed more academic. If you were raised in the American Midwest, for example, you would have trusted the ocean was there, but it wouldn’t seem especially real in any material sense unless you were standing in front of it.

The same can be said for large mountains, the towering majesty of which can be guessed at based on photographs, but a real sense of their immensity simply doesn’t come across through an image. It’s only when you’re standing amongst them, feeling impossibly small, that their scale is grasped.

Between western Massachusetts and Ohio, I grew up with neither mountains nor ocean at my disposal. Until I was 16, I saw the ocean once or twice a year, always after long drives to either Maine or Rhode Island. And between 1997 and 2010, I swam in the sea but twice.

I didn’t encounter mountains of an appreciable size until a single trip in high school, and I wasn’t near any again until I moved to Korea more than a decade later.

But now, I have easy access to both.

Every summer, we take the train from Saitama to Kanagawa and spend at least a few Saturdays a year on the beach. We barbecue, we read. We swim and walk along the water’s edge. We stay until the last color has faded from the western sky and stars appear over Mt Fuji, behind which the sun set.

We make our plans and we go whether the weather holds up or not. Sun is preferable, but we’ve spent entire days there in the rain, enjoying the hush of an otherwise-deserted beach from under our shelter, the rain sounds on the tarp blending with the rhythmic breaking of waves.

And sometimes we take different trains to Nagano or the Chichibu area, where we can hike all day in the mountains, eat a big dinner at an izakaya near the station, and nap the entire ride home, feeling blissfully exhausted and full of both food and experience.

In the next couple of years, we will move somewhere new and buy an old house to renovate. We will have to decide, too, whether we want to move somewhere closer to the mountains or closer to the sea. At present, that choice is unclear. We’ve made long lists of the advantages and disadvantages of each, but to no avail.

I know we will be happy wherever we end up, however, and I know that the joys of these places will never cease for me. No matter how accustomed I might become to living by the sea or up in the mountains, these places will always be special.

They won’t get old because they can’t get old. Not for someone like me, who came of age in locations that ensured a permanent appreciation of faraway mountains and seas I could never take for granted.