J2A0P2A5N

9th

Our flight was delayed an hour. This was a relief as I had bunched up a backlog of tasks like carpet under skittering cartoon feet. The extra time meant we could take the train from home to the airport instead of relying on the gig economy. T observed that this felt fortuitous given all of the train trips we had planned in Japan. The wait for BART was only three minutes and the ride pleasant and smooth. I realized partway through that the email from ZIP AIR had scary red text about the check-in counter closing strictly one hour before departure. I had assumed that incorporated delayed departure times. But, my brain asked, innocently, quivering: what if it didn't? I spent the bulk of the train ride meditating in an attempt to be at peace with the mountain of terror summoned like a floating island out of the fog. This worked well and lead me to re-learn the distinctions between the various Japanese Zen schools. I remembered what I already knew in my heart: sōtō cool, rinzai and ōbaku drool (imo).

By the time I was halfway through a PDF of Dōgen's Fukanzazengi we reached the airport and began our dash to the ZIP AIR counter. It was hard to find; a couple of stalls lurking at the far end of a row otherwise dominated by Air India. It did not appear in the directory of airlines and we ran back and forth in the international terminal becoming increasingly despondent about our chances. We found the counter well staffed with much relief, only to then have our carry-ons weighed and be told we were 10kg over the strict carry-on weight limit. I had totally misread the email about that and thought there was a 7kg limit for one's personal item; no. Your total carry-on weight could only be 7kg. Wild. I ate a big cost to check my backpack which gave me a new thing to be frightened about since I inherently do not trust bag checking ever.

Security was light and the terminal uncrowded. I drank a big beer and ate a tunafish sandwich. While I ate, I copied the detailed digital itinerary my wife made in Google Docs to my dead tree calendar diary. It's possible this calendar will be yet another ozymandian head stone in the wasteland of my attempts to remember when anything ever is but so far I've been finding it useful. Converting the ever malleable and ephemeral digital data of my days' narrative to the fixed world of paper is ritualistically transformative and helpful.

On the plane I read, with much enjoyment, Day Book of a Virtual Poet by Robert Creeley. It's a compendium of posts by an American poet to a mailing list for a 1996 writing class. I was particularly pleased to learn of renga and the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.

I reflected on how much I appreciate the wonder a mid 90s writing class had at electronically mailing their professor. This practice lives on, though mailing lists have been replaced by learning systems with comment threads. It is mundane, now. An aspect of the Virtual Poet's wonder though was about wandering the nascent world wide web and finding poems both familiar and new. The possibility for such wonder is still right in front of us even if electronic text has lost its lustre; one must only stray from the corporate social media malls and start surfing on their own again like we used to.

I eventually settled into Baldur's Gate 3, an activity I realized only one night prior was possible on my linux-running Framework 13. It didn't run well but it ran enough.

Sleep came, surprisingly. Two hours was more than I expected to get.

10th

This day existed. It slipped into the dark maw of time. Breezy exit from Narita and quick retrieval of my checked backpack: my despairing had come to naught. Sleepless delirium set in by the time we made it from the airport to Tokyo station and, for the second time, I found myself trapped at a station exit without enough money on my IC card to leave. For a local, this is a non-issue: Tokyo station is littered with ATMs that work with Japanese banks. With cash you can then refill an IC card and exit. As a foreigner, I was unable to find an ATM that worked with my debit card.

Delirium and panic increased until my wife noticed a currency exchange machine outside the exit. Her IC card had enough money to exit so she turned the $20 I happened to have in my wallet into yen and passed it back to me over the stiles to feed my IC card. Lesson: always get yen at the airport.

Hotel and sleep.

11th

I dreamed of a trip in a wet place decrepit and ripping like an over saturated paper towel. In the dream we rushed to leave the wet place but saw an old friend at a restaurant and lingered. I woke at 4:30 and passed the time by texting the friend. Re-slept until 7:30.

As is tradition, our first breakfast in Japan was a 山 of 711 food: onigiri, natto roll, tamago sando, croquette sando. Cromulent coffee from a cafe promising precious moments. We returned to Tokyo station and entered the towering Daimaru mall to look for the Final Fantasy 9 store. We found it, but spent far more time wandering between floors and staring at very beautiful plant dense aquaria and terraria. I saw small shrimps so vibrantly colored each one looked hand painted. Each glass container was a lush world unto itself: frozen implosions of green in the otherwise beige sterility of a fancy mall.

We escaped the admittedly very enjoyable capitalist spiraling and found our train to Hakone. The beige-framed silver-shining glass of Tokyo became greener and greener until, at each stop, the heavy wall of cicada drone poured in on hot wet clouds of summer air. Finally, in Hakone, we exited the train dwarfed by towering mountains thick with tree and vine. The aquaria had everted: I had become shrimp.

We took a wrong turn exiting the station but that led us to a Hakone themed Evangelion store by the exit of the train station. I bought the magnetic likeness of Evangelion unit 01 enjoying an onsen. The Evangelion units are soft inside their shells; such softness aches under the pressure of post apocalyptic family trauma. It pleased me to see such a mushy machine enjoying a relaxing hot spring.

At the end of a pedestrian bridge across an overfull river we found the hotel's elevator built right into a forested hillside. It opened on one side to an old walking highway, then rose and opened on the other into the hotel. I was reminded of a trick that old (and probably current) 3D games used to simulate changing floors in a level: enter an elevator on one side, listen to it move, then exit on the other side. In terms of the 3D space of the level you just walked through two doors and the time spent in between was likely used to unload some resources and load in others. I always think of this when I use a two-doored elevator like the hotel's. Here, a very surprising resource had loaded: a habitat full of rhinoceros beetles. Adults and children both streamed past us uninterested while we cooed and marveled at the insects.

From hotel to jinenjo soba. Jinenjo soba is like regular soba but with mountain yam. I loved it. My wife rated it more highly than the previous regional cuisines I've been enamored of: far above imobo and obanzai. We paid an extra ¥430 for fresh wasabi we got to grate ourselves which felt worth it, though the entire time I worked away at the green root I wasn't sure if I'd fallen for some kind of tourist trick. After, a festive dessert which even I, noted sweetness despiser, enjoyed: the mont blanc. Hakone has dueling mont blanc places flanking the main road from Yumoto station. I recommend the one from the place with the little foot bath out front.

We walked upwards partially on the old walking highway past a large cemetery and into a hilltop park in dense forest. The bug, bird, and frog music was blissfully deafening. In the midst of all this, a seemingly abandoned infrastructural building sat enmossing, belching out a sewage stench.

A pause at a bottle shop for local beer and sake. They were blasting a reggae cover of Under the Sea. It caused me great psychic injury as if the cartoon lobster was himself cutting into my ears with his over-sized claws. I was fumbling to count out yen coins to pay like a movie murder victim trying to unlock their car, anxious to escape the sound.

At the hotel, the realization that 7pm was not an appropriate bed time and that ours bodies would soon mewl for food. One final trip out for a 711 bangohan to rhyme with breakfast, then, biru and tv.

12th

Up at 7:00 and down to the overly crowded but very tasty breakfast buffet. I repurposed miso soup ingredients as condiments for my curry and piled natto on scrambled eggs. I tried fermented horseradish on sweet tamago. Two cups of genmaicha. The horseradish was creamy and its kick had become mild. Not my favorite thing but it went well with the sweetened eggs.

From the Hakone-Yumoto station we took a bus up the mountain. As far as either of us could remember, our first bus ride in Japan. The bus went surprisingly fast on the narrow, steep, winding roads. I felt like the payload of a torpedo shooting through a green sea. We passed a number of empty buildings all stepping backwards from the present into the forest's future past like homer and his bush.

The Hakone botanical garden was a pure joy: dense with plants, science focused, and full of cicadas. It's a wetland focused botanical garden with distinct areas for bog, fen, swamp, and a particular kind of mountainous Japanese wetland. My wife and I are both swamp-heads and appreciated the clear distinctions. I saw some kind of wild chicken strutting about. A sleepy kabuto. Many large spiders including one as large as my thumb. Around us, mountains appeared and disappeared in the mist.

A conbini fortification, short bus ride, and a long and steep walk. We passed a lot of litter which was sad. We also passed a lot of terrestrial crabs. They regarded us with bravery, strafe clacking around us in a semicircle like Master Chief in a deathmatch round while we filmed them and cooed.

At last, the Hakone open-air museum. I wanted to attend exclusively to experience the Symphonic Sculpture and I wasn't not disappointed. Early this year my wife and I did a stained glass class and enjoyed working in the medium; I was eager to be physically within a huge stained glass sculpture. The work fell short for me. Perhaps it was the dim, cloudy day or the thick waste layer of influencers attempting to film themselves or be filmed by beleaguered significant others walking backwards on narrow, slippery stairs. Perhaps it was the way that the negative space of concrete seemed to dwarf the actual glass pieces. Perhaps it was the way the subject matter was in large part cutesy. It's rare that I am so interested in everything about an artistic concept but then so let down by its execution. Meanwhile, I had no expectations about the naked-man-lying-spread eagle-face-down-in-the-grass sculpture and loved everything about it.

My favorite thing at the museum ended up not being open air at all but instead the Armoured Dreamer exhibit in the main indoor portion of the museum. The indoor-air museum. I had had a panic attack in the cafe just before the armoured dreamer exhibit. This may have led me to particularly enjoy the sculptures of samurai men curled up into fetal positions of sorrow and fear.

A one stop train ride to Goura station, the end of the line. We walked until an open restaurant appeared. It happened to be an unagi place. I resolved to try a new thing that has haunted me since my first visit to Japan: whitebait. It's just fish; I eat fish; but something about whitebait has always deeply unsettled me. I think it's all the eyes. This whitebait came on a snowy mountain of shredded daikon. I gulped my sake to steel myself and found that whitebait, despite my fear, has a very mild flavor and undemanding texture. The daikon was the prominent flavor.

A final meandering train-ride from one terminal station, Goura, to the other, Hakone-Yumoto. I found this more enjoyable than the herking jerking bus ride up. We passed a massive deer with sprawling antlers nosing through grass mere feet from the train window. It was completely non-plussed by the large vehicle.

It was only 19:00 when we returned but most things near the hotel were closed, so, the third trip to a conbini. I found sake in a sippy carton for ¥100 and bought it. I tucked it away in my bag to save it for when the moment felt correct.

13th

Up and a sink bath because i was too tired and pressed for time to do anything else. Another round at the buffet and another food first for me: century egg. It was a topping on the Chinese breakfast option of congee. It tasted like salty gelatin. My wife had her online Japanese class on USA time so I read poetry. I was moved by Wordsworth while staring at a mountain from the window of the hotel. I wanted coffee and remembered the European themed cafe on the main street in Yumoto. I'd been fascinated by the simultaneous consumption of coffee and curry ever since watching my wife play Persona 5 and indulged while she finished her class. The curry and coffee were both very good and I learned all about Maurice Utrillo. Importantly, the grandfather clock I'd seen in photos was functioning and toned out every fifteen minutes.

We had plans to take the bus back up into the mountain to walk on a very old pedestrian highway and stop at a nearly as old amazake cafe but throughout the morning a throng of humans had appeared in Hakone. We fled to Odawara. We steeled ourselves to once, finally, and for all time conquer the confusing shinkansen ticket machine. It went well until the final step in which we were warned about not being able to get off anywhere in the Nagoya city zone. As Nagoya was our destination, this was troubling, and we gave up.

We crawled defeated to the ticket counter line. Luckily it was short and the woman who helped us was exceptionally kind and sweet. Snacks and drinks for the ride in hand we sat on the platform to wait. The shinkansen mostly does not stop at Odawara and I experienced being passed by a bullet train for the first time. It frightened me. I could not determine if it was physical or psychological but the passing train seemed to take all of the air with it as it passed the platform. I love the shinkansen and appreciated it so my terror was purely animal. The small deer of my brain wanted to flee.

When I first moved to Atlanta long I had a similar fear of the MARTA train. I'd not spent much time around subway-type trains at that point in my life. I'm from a quiet place. I remember sitting up and looking out my bedroom window when I could hear a car coming since it was such an infrequent occurrence. The MARTA train, humble as far as trains go, was enough to make me flinch when it came screeching into its station. However, as I depended on it daily it became unjarring.

Today, the massive bullet dolphin exploding past at 200kmh shrank me back to youthful and terrified proportions. This is very different from actually being on a shinkansen: a remarkably smooth experience. As I watched the mountains and towns and factories and rice fields stream by I spent some time stewing in anger at my own country. We have all the resources, intelligence, construction experience, and space to have trains like this. A surfeit of selfish greed and a general unwillingness to cooperate and share space prevents us. Shame-kansen.

Nagoya swam in its own simmering summer soup. I immediately missed the cooler mountain air. We had an undramatic time getting into our hotel and spent some time wandering the city before meeting with some friends. I enjoyed the 300 year old warehouses of the Preserved Historical District. It had many old, cicada-bearing trees in its shrines.

We met friends for an arcade and a further sanpo. Exhaustion truly came for us at a dinner of Nagoya's exceptional crispy eel specialty food. Bed, bed, bed.

14th

tired, so tired. the soul delay came for me this day. met up with friends for breakfast. in a coffee diner type place underneath a spiraling arts college that looks like a playstation five. confusion: were some items available until 11:00? after 11:00? or merely sold out? i obtained omurice and coffee through the fog.

first, the capcom exhibit at Nagoya City Art Museum. corporate art, but a fine example of it. i particularly enjoyed the pixel art technique explainers and the level design documents for street fighter ii. there was more at the museum i would have seen but we had only a day in Nagoya and decided to move on to the Osu shopping area.

despite my omuraisu i felt very hungry. I felt like a cored apple. in Osu I held a frozen custard chocolate dipped waffle in one hand and a crepe-taco modanyaki in the other alternating sweet and savory bites huddled on a chair outside the okonomiyaki window. I had fully, utterly goblinized. Food smeared my already sweat drenched mouth. My wife found a nice lemon seltzer in the bendi next to me and offered to share it; in a few gulps, I destroyed it (I bought her a new one). Sitting back in my chair I finally felt whole.

We toured a multi-story electronics store packed with mountains of harvested electronic offal. DVD players, desktops, laptops, consoles, tape decks: every kind of thing stacked on the floor and hung from the walls like cuts of meat. The elderly solderman sat on a small stool among his hoard like a wise dragon. A deeply inspiring experience.

Upstairs in the same store our friend bought an MSX for a low price. Overall, a highly auspicious visit. Had I been a girl on a date in Tokimeki Memorial and this had been the game's junk shop I would have promptly entered maximum blush state. とても楽しかった, indeed.

We had to get to our next city destination. Our friend loaded us into a taxi. Its driver was very sweet. We learned about Taxi GO, the Japanese domestic stand-in for rideshare which emulates the uber/lyft experience but via established and regulated taxis. It reminded me of Radio Cab in Portland and it pleased me to see companies like uber/lyft brought to heel; however, the service is absent outside of cities and that was disappointing.

A long train ride from Nagoya to Toba. The setting sun pierced our train car like an angelic toothpick through a slim jim. I read more Wordsworth and pleasantly dozed on and off. Mountains to our right were swallowed by a towering thunder cloud that reflected pink and orange while its lightning struck out in luminous webs that reminded me of the twitching homesteads of the giant spiders we saw at the Hakone botanical garden.

We tried to call the hotel in Toba for a ride from the train station. It failed, though we did briefly talk to someone in the kitchen of the hotel. A walk through the dark. After we checked in the hotel called ahead for us at a local restaurant and a second dark walk later through an overgrown, rusty road we sat in a small, half-empty Japanese restaurant with a "FULL" sign on the door. The sashimi was delicious. The miso soup thick and flavorful. I gushed, as best I could in my simple Japanese, to the staff.

On the walk home we heard fireworks we could not see. Neon on lonely tall buildings reflected in the bay. crickets, frogs, and a single car. bed

15th

Up early for hotel breakfast. It featured the slimiest seaweed bowl I have ever tasted. A bus to Ise. On the way we passed the bus stop for a Ninja Castle--a kind of live show for kids in a recreation of an old castle. I found it very funny that this establishment had an entire bus stop to itself. No one got on or off there.

We got off near out desination: Miato Iwa, the wedded rocks. These rocks get a massive rope tied between them a few times a year as organized by the old shrine next to them. The shrine is very lovely and full of frog statues. Along the rocky wall overlooking the ocean frog statues have been eroded to only the general suggestion of frogs. Next to them are freshly carved fellows. I realized that, for all I knew, many of the rocks forming the wall could have once been frogs.

The shrine had an art gallery cafe with lovely water colors including one of birds on a mossy chain link fence that we stared at lovingly for a long time. The cafe served perfect gyokuro tea. The rocks' wedding rope was pretty frayed and would be replaced soon. A heron sat on the larger one, staring intently after prey.

Near the wedded rocks we had Ise udon and a local pale ale: my favorite meal so far of the trip. This meal also included my first multi-sentence exchange with someone totally in Japanese. I asked if the Ise udon could be made cold; it could not; I said that was fine and I would order it anyway. Not a very deep cultural exchange but to be spoken and understood was gratifying.

Back to the bus to get near the Ise Grand Shrine. On this trip I learned from our friend that Japan has a ranking system for its shrines according to various features and aspects. The Ise Grand Shrine sits at the top in its own tier. Above S tier. It is surrounded by what is, if you squint, just an outdoor mall; but this mall is a beautiful recreation of an Edo period town and a surprising delight. We took in a very impressive taiko performance and enjoyed a frozen mango dessert. It managed to be more pleasant to exist in than Gion in Kyoto. I love Gion for its history and architecture but its transformation into a tourism locus is imperfect.

The ersatz history of the Ise yokocho made for a far more chill and relaxed experience. In general, Ise is just less inundated with foreign tourists. I recognize the irony of me complaining about this. But while I endeavor in Japan and everywhere to tread lightly and respectfully, the foreign horde in Kyoto is gumming up streets doing illegal photo shoots in rented kimonos and yelling a lot. I don't like to be around them.

The Ise shrine itself surprised me. We've been to several shrines and each one tends to have some degree of gilded extravagance. Though I'd read much about the Ise shrine and understood its use of mostly wood in its cyclical recreation, I did not realize how simple and plain the architecture would be. I liked it; the mossy overgrowth on thatched roofs got to be an aesthetic focal point instead of ostentatious gold leaf.

Back to the yokocho for a dinner of regional tuna: a chirashi with rough chopped, marinated maguro. I creaked my bones into a cross legged position for the tatami seating.

We had stayed out past the bus lines' schedules; luckily, the train station was an easy mile walk away. We passed a shrine in a dense, dark wood on the way. A massive drone of bug song resonated from within. Sadly, it was closed by that point and we could not enter.

A chance encounter in the hotel stairwell led to the knowledge of a fireworks show over the bay behind the hotel. It was short but elaborate and masterful. One work was an upside down smiley face.

Packing, a mini one cup ozeki, sleep. Anxious about tomorrow's train schedule.

17th

Up and to breakfast presented with hot coals mid-table and a buffet of raw fish awaiting cooking. I fucked it up and every fish bit was under or overcooked. I did not enjoy the gimmick and would in the future prefer that people who know better what they are doing cook fish for me. I had curry that tasted like khao soi and was surprisingly spicy for japan. I also had curry that was distressingly sweet.

We trained far. At one transfer we were supposed to exit and re-enter but were so intent on making our next train we forgot. This mistake meant needing to use the ekiinsan (train station employee) intercom which led to the appearance of the station master after enough back and forth. To our relief, the station master was a kind and gentle man. I default to fearing those with "master" in their job title but my fear was unfounded. I'm glad my wife's language level was enough to explain and correct the situation with the station master. Part of the rectification process involved the remote employee on the intercom transferring her likeness from one machine at the station to another in order to work with the station master on our situation. I could not help but feel a cyber thrill at this.

A major goal of this trip was selling copies of my latest noise album to Parallax Records in Kyoto. I'd been to Parallax on my last two visits to Japan and stay in light contact with them through Instagram. I love it there and was thrilled when they offered to buy a few copies of my new album. I wanted to save them and me the hassle of postage so just took CDs with me on this trip.

We walked to Parallax after dropping things off at the Kyoto Ace Hotel, an establishment we jokingly (read: deathly seriously) refer to as our real home. I sold three CDs meaning that, for the first time in a 19 year noise "career" (air quotes so heavy they have come to rest at the floor of the Marianas trench), my work is now physically for sale in a store. This mattered to me a lot even if materially it means very little.

I exited college in 2009 and at that time noise was a big part of my life. I practiced regularly and took my work seriously. After entering "adult" life and moving to an actual city I completely failed to network or promote myself. Noise became an abstract idea because I was, simply, too terrified to actually do anything public with my music. This post-college "real" life terror coincided with a dreadfully abusive relationship that nearly brought my entire life to a halt. During this time i completed no albums and my practice dried up. I failed to play any shows beyond dicking around at my own or friend's houses. Noise became a haunted thing that some ghostly version of myself did. I routinely have nightmares about playing shows and them going terribly. While I still haven't played, by my own estimation, a "real" show since college I have now, at least, left some tangible tokens of my work somewhere outside my immediate circle of friends.

From Parallax to a dinner of cold sudachi soba at one of our favorite Kyoto restaurants. A night sanpo and some shopping then the usual: tv and beer.

18th

A train day broken up by lunch with a friend who is now an ex-pat. Our friend gently beat our brows about using the luggage storage lockers at Tokyo Station. The idea of a luggage locker is so foreign to me. I know they were in places like Grand Central Station but after 9/11 I remember them getting scarce. In the USA I associate them with requiring specific coinage or being in disrepair if present at all. I knew it was a bigger part of culture in Japan but had just not considered it.

What a fool I have been. They take IC card which doubles as both payment and your key. Fast, cheap, and easy: my big bag fit in the smallest size locker and every thing else we had fit in a large locker. The only challenge was finding open ones but there are maps everywhere pointing the way to locker clusters. It didn't take very long and made traversing the Daimaru mall by the station much easier.

Matcha soba for lunch. It was part of a set with an elaborate parfait. The concurrent consumption of savory and sweet would normally be offputting to me but, like back in Osu, I was very hungry and grateful to be eating. I particularly enjoyed the cafe's perfect preparation of traditional matcha tea unmarred by sweetener or dairy. It can be hard to find that in the US and I am very clumsy at doing it myself.

We spent the afternoon fully immersed in Commerce. We had a goal of finding train items for a parent and our friend had a vague recollection of a train store down on Character Street. I'd never been to such a street: two dense basement mall corridors full of stores dedicated to specific properties, production companies, or characters. We found trains and obtained some Dr. Yellow goods. I was tempted by a mononoke hime blind box at the ghibli store and deployed a strategy of shaking them taught to us by our friend. It worked: based on the amount of movement inside, I correctly determined which box contained the giant forest god head.

Luckily the overstuffed nature of our bags deterred further commerce and we headed for the train. The Narita Express felt very worth it and we got to the airport early. The Zip Air staff was surprisingly way more relaxed and friendly than they had been in San Francisco. Dinner of curry udon, soft tofu, Japanese single malt whisky. An uneventful flight home.

Though I missed my cat, my family, and some of my things, I ached to remain in Japan and not return to the USA.

Entering Japan, immigration enforcement was streamlined and pleasant. We barely interacted with humans. Back in the USA, we first waited in a tightly packed line of exhausted travelers for over an hour in a dim and sad room. The immigration control officers reflected, neatly, the diversity of the United States by their demographics. This kind of diversity usually comforts me after returning from nations with a more homogeneous population. This time, however, I watched from far back in the line as they coldly pulled an Arab family from the "citizens and permanent residents" line and took them to the advanced screening rooms in back.

I've always thought of the USA's unique diversity as a healthy defense against authoritarianism but these days I am less convinced.

One of the officers who had led away the Arab family ended up handling our screening. He was grinning and jovial and let us through without issue. We walked towards baggage claim and I looked back; the family had still not emerged from the back rooms.