Who knows how long I’ve loved you, you know I love you still. Will I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to I will. – The Beatles Akeno Gekijo Strip Club Far too many mosquitoes in here, buzzing around and biting my arms and legs. Ugh. See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries: [album id=4 template=compact] See world ruins in the ruins gallery.
Kichijoji Japangrish Mats
While meandering through Kichijoji recently I spied these cute Japangrish welcome mats. Outside a cello shop. Outside a tanning salon. See more of my Strange Japan content here.
the last dream of my soul
. . . I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you
Pumpkin Pudding Yoghurt Drink
I had never drunk pumpkin in my life before today. I wonder if anybody else has? If you’ve spent any time in Japan there’s a good chance you’ve eaten a fair bit of it, both savory and sweet. You may have had it in ice cream, you may have had good old Pumpkin Pie (though that’s surely more American), or you may have had Pumpkin Purin. Have you drunk it though? From the front art it’s pretty hard to tell this is a Pumpkin drink, though if you look top right you’ll see the green lid of a pumpkin. The … Read More
sound in an empty house
Leave sound in an empty house in its own room there. . . . – William Stafford Gunma Motor Lodge I stood in the room silently and wondered; are these shadows the same shadows I’ll see in five years, in ten, in fifty? Will I recognize them? Will they recognize me? See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries: [album id=4 template=compact] You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.
Hulk Want Cut
In the window of a hairdressers in Kichijoji, Japan. Because even the Hulkster needs to get a cut. Though he has more hair in the cartoon. See more of my Strange Japan content here.
Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow in Shibuya Station
The Myth of Tomorrow is an epic painting by renowned Japanese painter Taro Okamoto. It is massive, 30 meters long and 5.5 high, painted some 43 years ago, lost for 31 of those, and now on permanent display in Shibuya Station. On display in Shibuya station. I first saw the Myth of Tomorrow (Asu no Shinwa) in 2007, when it was on display at the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. I was on a museum-going jag at that time, and had been to the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art just a little while earlier- so I knew a bit about … Read More
a cloud of yellow dust flew
In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on. – Gustave Flaubert Heian Wedding Hall See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries: [album … Read More
the catacombs of Ptolemais
For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements … Read More
the secret of a garret-room
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning’s dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! – Elizabeth Barret Browning Seigoshi gold … Read More