Shibuya, Tokyo

30 March 09: I can’t rationalize the way I feel about Japan. Looking through old photos and feeling such an immense longing to return. It doesn’t make sense – I know I could never live there, but I love it all the same.

I just know that from the second I stepped into Narita for the first time, I fell in love completely.

Kyoto

16 August 07: Before I went to Tokyo, I had plans to check out the city. The first day we spent walking around Ginza, getting lost and searching for food. I took only one picture there – of the Kabuki-za theatre. It was strangely depressing yet poignant. I brought a Boom Boom Satellites album along to listen to. I thought the music would go well with the city. It did and I listened to it on the shinkansen ride to Kyoto.

Kabuki-za theatre

Things turned in Kyoto and on my last day there I experienced a certain emotion I had never experienced so strongly before in my life. After that I didn’t want to return to the city. But that night we took the evening train back to Tokyo and we arrived in Tachikawa close to ten.

Near the hostel in Kyoto

In Tachikawa I felt as if I had stepped into Gibson’s Idoru. It was raining and everyone carried see-through plastic umbrellas which reflected the orange-red neon shop signs. We walked next to the train tracks, cables hanging heavy and knotted above them. Drunk businessmen stumbled out of eating houses from time to time. I refused to take a single photograph of Tachikawa at night. I had the sense of being near the end of the world.

Wires in Gion, Kyoto

That was pretty much the vibe I got from the Japanese city at night. Downtown Kyoto was like a cardboard city – such a strange emptiness about it that made you aware of space rather than the matter which it contained. Looking up into the starless night sky with empty buildings hindering your view.

I remember taking the train and passing the Gotanda station. Omote-sando. Shinagawa. Shimbashi. I remember the crowds did not bother me at all. But I forgot the name of the Kyoto subway station where we saw the strange old couple with the kittens. Though I still have the tiny photo of the kitten that the man gave me.

Man with kitten, Kyoto

I miss that state of mind. It hasn’t been the same since.