Sydney and Auckland have a lot of water nearby them. That proximity is one of the things i miss most about living in Tokyo, so whenever i go back home i spend a lot of time in, on, beside or under the Pacific Ocean. Struggling with coming back to Tokyo i found a solution to my waterless ennui by following this advice: “Even bowls of water with one or two goldfish, or a single water loving plant, can bring the healing benefits of water, and the understanding of its life sustaining nature, into a room.” (HERE).
Top image of Ella against the outgoing tide, bottom image of Manukau harbour from an aeroplane flying into Auckland.
Bye, Tokyo. I’m off for two months to Sydney and Auckland. Photo of a building in Omotesando.
Some candid (and poorly referenced) advice from the Wikipedia entry on ‘Freelancer’.
Yaizu is in Shizuoka, about an hour down the coast from Tokyo by Shinkansen. I travelled there for a few days last week with editors Lucas and Kaori (HERE) for an upcoming story in the next issue of their magazine – Papersky. We stayed with Kaori’s family, in their house by the beach. All the neighbours are old friends and the grandmothers spend their days cooking and talking together. Many of them lost husbands in a tragic sinking during the ’50s, so they have formed very strong bonds with one another.
At one time Yaizu was Japan’s largest fishing port; it is not anymore. The old men in the photo above were fishing for ‘Tachi’, a long silver fish; the name means ’sword’ in Japanese. “We will fish as long as the tide comes in” said the old man on the right. He was quite infamous among the other old men; they all paid him a lot of respect. It turns out he used to be a captain in his day, sailing all over the world. Now he builds glow in the dark lures and tries to catch fish named “Sword” for as long as the tide comes in.
Into the Glasshouses at Fujiya Hotel in Hakone (HERE). Fujiya Hotel is the oldest western ‘hotel’ in Japan and is also one of the most expensive; stupidly so. You should only stay here if you have a lot of money or feel that telling other people you stayed here would somehow meet some deep, unmet, need. We came to feed the fish and walk through the greenhouses but stayed longer to read for a while in the reading room by the big windows in the entrance. You see families pull up where each member has their own camcorder, simultaneously recording. An old father arrives with a limp and a golden cane. Grandmothers in worn furs, and the beige european tourists dressed entirely in beige, a genuinely confusing camouflage.
Article “24 hours as a Tokyo Internet café refugee” has just gone up on CNNgo (HERE). I originally planned to spend a full week living as an Internet café refugee, a real chance to do some endurance reporting with a few nod’s to 70’s endurance artist Chris Burden. But i fell victim to serious abdominal pain after the second night requiring a short hospital visit. Perhaps the burden of punishment for using 70’s performance art techniques as a substitute for real journalism. I asked the Doctor: “Did i catch it in the café’s?” He said: “maybe you caught it in the café, maybe you caught it in the conbini”. Then i read THIS and decided i should abandon the week long project, temporarily, at least until the internet cafés install better ventilation. After a few more feeble attempts the week was downsized to a more comfortable 24 hours in the claustrophobic bowels of Tokyo’s internet cafés.
Images above are very grainy digital photos i took while inside the café’s (the top photo shows the Manboo! where i likely contracted said illness), it was impossible to shoot film; the ‘clack’ of the mirror slapping attracted too many “tsk’s” and “tut’s”.