Tennoji station, Friday

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.

Comments

Letting go of the things you love

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...

The curious incident of the bicycle in the night-time

Loretta & I. Friday, December 13 th – 2024 Criss-crossed by the mesh screen over my apartment window – Osaka parts its bleary eyes and wakes, stirring to a wide azure sky which stretches from the jagged incisors of Nara’s mountains to the Yodo river’s floodplains far in the north. Children pacing clumsily to school with their yellow safety hats bobbing like rubber ducks in a brook, elderly folks stopping in doorways to chatter through blue surgical masks and sighing “Samui naaaa…”, as if some long-revered mantra. A hot black coffee is my companion to sip at as I regard these fleeting scenes of neighbourhood life from my high-rise castle. It’s a Friday, and I have to work. But the thought of that is utterly trivial in my mind, driven to inconsequence by the thrill that builds in my chest at the reminder of the biggest event of the year – the company Christmas party on Sunday! The chance to dress to the nines in polished dress shoes and an elegant tie, to chink glass upon glass of...

A secret mission to Family Mart

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 ...

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