Posted on Sunday, 11/13/22.

I keep thinking that each warm day will be the last, but I am proved wrong, again and again. I have no sense of whether it is unseasonably warm, not having grown up here. I grew up in California, though I associate weather with northern Virginia, then Chicago, then Minneapolis, then Boston. Maybe most strongly with Virginia, which was one of the least inspired places, and in which I spent the saddest times. Some of these places have the longest winters of areas commonly inhabited in the US. Some of them are so cold that tunnels have been latticed beneath them, like in Evangelion. When I check my phone now the highs in Minneapolis are in the 40s, lows in single digits. In Boston highs are dipping into the 50s. It has snowed in many parts of the northern United States. Leaves have long since been torn from trees. I tried to buy apple cider here in late October, but as far as I know it effectively doesn’t exist. I should look harder. I should buy an apple and squeeze it to within an inch of its life. Everything has moved to Christmas branding, though I have little patience for hot chocolate. Maybe there is spiced rum, or mulled wine.

Today I stood on the 湘南 coast as thunderheads rolled gently in from out over the water, and the air was warm and charged. The atmosphere was quietly furious and striated, smushing me. Sleek dark bodies out among the whitecaps: surfers in half-length summer wetsuits. I walk through a Buddhist cemetery with human-sized hand-carved caves in the mountainside. They yawned. Some of them were decorated, visited, maintained, active, new metal objects gleaming dimly within them.

Last weekend was what would have been the summer festival here in 厚木, though it was pushed to November by the virus. A huge number of food stalls, events, a large fireworks display, participation by local businesses. More police officers than usual stood on platforms directing the crowds, against the anxiety that had rippled out from Seoul. All during the fireworks explosion, behind a barrier separating the main road from the riverbank seating, a police officer yelled the same instructions for the crowd to keep moving, uniformly and calmly. I ate a bag of mini castellas. I ate a meat-wrapped onigiri on a stick. I wanted to buy a whole charcoal-grilled fish on a skewer but was not hungry enough; they were the same type of fish that the festival is named after (鮎), and which is one half of the dual-creature mascot of the city: あゆコロ (a pig with a fish on its head).

After the festival’s major events ended I spent a few hours in the American-themed diner-bar near my apartment, where an older man (a barber) explained to me his thoughts on the dramatic differences between mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese cinema, which at that time of night I was not as able to follow as I had wanted, though which I appreciated. We sat at a table with four or so others. The bartender encouraged everyone to share two tables as the night lengthened. Beside the barber was a construction worker from 関西, his quieter friend, a younger Chinese woman who worked in insurance and had a spherical small fluffy dog, and a younger guy around my age who had helped run the diner during the festival rush, and wgo was entirely red in the face from free drinks given to him. Earlier I had offered him chips from my plate, as he said he hadn’t had time to eat anything, and after initially refusing, he finally took a single chip.