entry nº 37 // 20190122

looking for me, out there, after the JLPT the other day? 

i’m out wandering the back streets. there’s simply nothing like getting out there and just wandering those back streets for a bit. you know the ones: narrow, unglamorous, grungey, passed-over and all-but-forgotten, unless, of course, you live there. 

ideally it’s late afternoon or early evening, maybe there’s a light rain falling, lifting a slight haze up and out over everything. maybe you got a beer from the convenience store earlier, and drank it as you walked, and so you yourself too are feeling a bit of a light haze fizzling across your mind, so the whole thing starts to feel a bit permeable, inside and out. 

(maybe, also, you spotted a new kind of beer in the convenience store, and on impulse decided to try that one, not taking the time to translate whatever was written on the label, and maybe you were fairly disappointed to find, upon taking that first sip that it was a sort of pseudo-dark beer, the kind you don’t really like, but oh well)

it was perfect from the get-go, this particular bout of wandering: as all the people poured out of the test center and headed along that main street there, you turned back and spotted a possible route across the empty gravel lot next door. hop over a little low brick wall and hang a right, and you’re off. dropped into the flow of those little streets like that, you feel like you could just keep going and going. you wish it’d just continue indefinitely, though you know these streets will eventually take you downtown, towards the subway station, its crowds, its unsolitudes.

some details from the day: an apartment building spotted between houses w/ what appeared to be a dirtbike perched up on the roof; encountering, in the convenience store, the same woman who you coulda swore had passed by on her bike hours earlier, while you were sitting in the park sharing some of your bento with that cat; a little record shop, appearing out of nowhere like that part in the matrix 2 where neo or whoever opens that grubby old door in some worn-out part of the city and it opens into a gleaming white hallway, sterile, incongruous. that little record store had a bunch of morrissey posters and records. 

reached my original train station destination but just couldn’t bring myself to stop walking, so i kept going towards the next station along the line home. got there and decided to stop at suji ichi, this great little cheap restaurant right by the station entrance. had a beer, some great food, and finished reading frontier by can xue. it’s hard to explain exactly my feelings about that book but… i’m glad i read it. took my sweet slow time eating and, finally ready to rejoin the masses, headed down into the subway and got on the train home. 

[to be honest i don’t really have any photos from the moment i’m describing here – these are from earlier in the day. that’s just the way it goes sometimes. thing is, when you’re out there wandering the backstreets, there’s not always a good time to stop and take out your camera.]