I never jumped in the Sumida River but I thought about it many times. Not to die, but to float, float down to the sea. Where the birds go to have lunch on spring days when the trash we leave them isn’t quite enough to take home to the family. The floating idea, it’s all [...]
It was just a food truck. But on an overcast early Spring day in Sanya, it glowed. It was god-like cheesiness. It was as if an entire amusement park had rolled down the street and parked at the curb. Well, a cheap amusement park. Not all the lights on the truck appeared to work. But [...]
There’s something my great-grandfather is reputed to have said when he died at 101. Loosely translated from late Edo-period Japanese, he said: “I’m a coward when it matters, and a hero when it don’t.” This may be apocryphal family history. Most family history is. It’s blended from different sources like bad scotch, being as it [...]
I opt, for my stellar convenience, to live somewhere between god and the streets. I am no dharma bum, I am the son of Tokugawa courtesans and the wealthiest Burakumin slaves. My family wove silks made of leather, and spry kittens from straw in the emperor’s stables. For feudal times my family wove potato fibers [...]
In the sun, gleaming, I see a strand of spider silk, connecting a telephone pole and an Asahi beer machine. There aren’t too many of those beer machines left. The spider hung a single strand between the two objects. Spiders often do this. They get from one place to the other then decide to go [...]
Stand like superhero in your own time. Pose as if your feet are the only things keeping the planet from drifting into the burning sun. Marvel at the birds of the air, and the leaves on the ground. Choke back the tears of joy, where they drop could make roses grow. Be a champion, you [...]
The times are running, but I am not. I have clip-cashed all my coupons for extra time and value. They are in my wallet and I don’t see me spending them anytime soon. I am crushed to know you. I am devastated that we can’t be friends. I am simply passing the times of day [...]
I am the king of nearly all that you possess. It’s ever and it’s ugly and very often always a mess. Sifting through the tasty, that’s me, disguising guns as flowers and hollow dreams as property. Or was it poverty, something belched unto god with a bellows? It’s hard to say, time shifts and time [...]
Welcome to the Never-ending Tokyo Boogie-down Matsuri, the most officialest unofficial thing of whatever that you are ever gonna see. We pride ourselves on its deeply disorganized nature. We humble ourselves before the gods who refuse to attend. We all lived by ourselves down in the depths of the darling sea near an island they [...]
Sometimes, gaijin tourists come through here taking pictures of me or my friends. No big deal. Half the time we’re passed out. The other half the time we’re asleep. And the third half of the time we don’t give a shit. I worry, though. Where do the pictures go? I think about these things, see. [...]
