calicovia

Note: The first half of this blog was originally written in early March 2025. Sat in a notebook for 4 months. Thursday winds down, and into my little apartment I slump. Chores to do, and lunch to make, to keep the Joe of tomorrow going. What's in my fridge? 3 eggs, a half-empty bottle of mayo, and 4 rolls of 35mm. It's nights such as these that call for a convenience store mission. In the words of my good friend Vinny, who wrote about this quite recently, the convenience store truly is the lifeblood of Japan. On every street, from the bustling heart of downtown where tourists fill their baskets with egg sando and souvenirs, to the suburbs where housewives grab Omurice essentials to feed their hungry elementary school kids. On the steppes of Nagano, the rural villages of Kyushu, the rice paddies of Shikoku, and the palm tree-lines streets of Okinawa. The conbini is omnipresent. I throw on what's warmest, a mishmash of colors topped off with my Blundstone boots. Though March ...

See you, Brady-san! I'd be lying if I said this year hasn't been full of tears. Underneath the bold, black lettering reading '新幹線 Shinkansen', I wrapped my arms around Brady, giving him one final hug before he crossed the ticket gates with a suitcase in each hand. Mauli, Ella and I waved until he disappeared from view and waved a little more after that. The bittersweet memories of whole year of adventures, jokes, and endless laughter played through my head and weighed heavy on my heart for the rest of the day. I thought about the first time we met in Umeda school - how we shared our love for jazz and Chet Baker, and ate Bento in the back room at lunch. I thought about all those times sitting on the rooftop of Namba Parks, drinking a beer and talking about life, the bowling and arcade days, skiing together and weekending in Korea. It hurts to say goodbye to your best friend. It's far from the first time I've felt this way over the past 6 months. It was under very...

Beneath that dense skyline Where buildings crowd like teeth Away vanishes the October sun Casting azure streaks between the ruffled clouds A sweet farewell A 'see you in the morning' From the station's exit flows a stream Not of water, but of humans The businessman, briefcase clutched in hands which typed, Pointed, smoked cigarettes The bleary-eyed student Trudging to cram school Elderly chaps In Sunday best and pork-pie hats Moving the at the speed of drying paint Or perhaps slower Tanimachi-suji Artery to the depths of the city Carries sounds of car horns, traffic Headlights, manic Taxis and passengers Police cars (and passengers) Friday, doorway to weekend excitement Izakayas, highballs, a break from confinement 48 hours of respite.

AI- generated art. Loved by some, hated by many more - which undoubtedly has made it one of the most controversial topics in art circles.  Well, at least on social media where everybody has an opinion to give. Only 4 years ago, 'AI art' was little more than using machine algorithms to enhance images, to reduce blur and crispen the edges of a photograph of a long-lost relative. That and the stupid glee of Dall-e mini, a - for lack of a better word, toy - that would spit out four pint-sized barely recognizable images of 'Yoda at a nightclub' or 'Michael Jackson chased by Godzilla'. Things have made a scarily drastic change since those days. Now there are AI videos of imaginary people with fluid and dynamic movement, near-indistinguishable fake images of, for instance, a solemn-looking veteran asking for likes, which fool tens of thousands of Facebook boomers daily. If one is aware and keen-eyed, you may just be able to spot the inconsistencies which give away the ...

Nankai train at Tezukayama station  A few years ago, if you'd told me I'd have such a burning passion for photography, I'd have scoffed. It was always something I viewed as too 'easy' - just click a button and you're done! That's not any special, that's not art! But I've come to realize that to photograph is to capture a fleeting moment in time, to preserve its feeling in a mix of color and shape, to make the intangible tangible. Our memory fades, and warps and twists the situations we've experienced, but a photograph preserves a precise instant forever. Every moment we live is instantly transient. Nothing in life can ever happen 'twice', not in the same way. A day can be repeated in the same meticulous way a hundred times over, and yet it will never ever be the same. The weather above, the interactions we have, our emotions - us . As a person, you are not the same as you were 5 minutes before. A photograph clips an instant, a 1/200th of...

It was the Summer of 1972 when London bureaucrats, in pressed suits and with pompous chatter, sliced up and remolded the United Kingdom with pencils on an oversized map. With sips of tea and compasses in hand, the ceremonial counties that had shaped a nation over centuries bygone were partitioned, frankensteined together in the interests of proper management of local governments. This was how the proud county of Lancashire, whose ancestors had birthed kings of England and clashed shields with the white rose of York, lost so many of its children. Manchester, Salford, Stockport, all amalgamated into the metropolitan modernity of Manchester. Southport and St Helens were ceded to Merseyside's growing form. In the farthest North-West territories of England, a place of grey rain upon rolling fells, three counties were brought together - in spite of their differences and united by kinship. To the East, Westmorland - bringing with it the Pennine peaks, mint cake from Kendal, and ale from P...