Posted on Sunday, 09/04/22.

Walking back from the last train yesterday the side-streets were mostly dark. There is a collection of small snack bars in the alley between my apartment and the nearest convenience store, each hidden on the second floor of their respective building. Some of them are named suspiciously. Some of them have had their doors cracked when I have passed and I have seen dark stairs, cigarette buts, and curling smoke around bare lamps. They are identifiable as open only from the dim lights through pebbled glass windows and, on the night that I walked by them, each emitted, as if from underwater or buried underground, the faint sound of karaoke. I didn’t hear this on Friday but I did on Saturday, and I am not sure why; maybe it was the time of night. It surprised me most that each small bar gave off the same muted singing, growing louder and softer as I moved between each bar, as if they were all in collusion, as if karaoke was implicitly known as the supreme Saturday night activity. Maybe on another night I will go in to the least suspicious one and see if there is room to join. That night I had had dinner in 六本木 Technically 西麻布, I have learned, which is where the colleague’s childhood friend (now lawyer) lives and has raised three children. The area is ハイカラ and dense. The restaurant 権八 is curious, made of stone and wood, and far too large. with a Japanese work colleague who was returning to the US soon. I ate more grilled meat in one sitting than I have ever had in my life, and felt, at times, quite ill through the night. I try to remember that some people can eat in portions like this without feeling anything at all, which astounds me, and gives me some insight into the bleakness of most consumption, and of us as machines that extrude and compact. We moved from the restaurant to a hidden bar with a mirrored door next to which one had to enter a code. The bar felt like the types of bars I see in movies where people go to a bar and are wearing cuff-links and discussing watches and laundering money. In one corner an older man, suit-jacket off and folded casually to his side on the couch, spoke to a younger woman about very casual things. We ordered sour cocktails and at strange cheeses and something called 生キャラメル, which I tried to explain was probably a low-temperature caramel, but which the work colleague was convinced was something else. He explained to me that the prefix 生 (nama) is widely beloved by Japanese people when applied to any food or drink, and that the reason is unclear. It is simply better than that which is non-生. During the night I drink three 生ビール.

Tomorrow I turn 25, which means I cannot be as young as Zadie Smith or DFW in publishing a novel. But mostly I am unbothered. I arrived so recently though that my birthday will be unknown, and I have no special plans, though I will probably take myself out somewhere late tomorrow. When I was last here I was 19, and left one week before turning 20. Visibly I must appear older, but it is not so obvious without direct comparison. My body, while not so strong, is still pliant and uncomplaining. I know many of the same people, though my relation to them is different. Two or three years of the intervening time has felt somewhat illusory, and routine has compressed much of its passing into blocks of uniformity. My past is somehow very easy to digest.

I went out on Friday night as well with some of the interns here, and broke off into a smaller group with one of them who has been here for three months already, and whose life is quite different and densely complicated. He had started drinking before most of us, and had begun to give specific comments on the kind of person he thought I was, which intrigued me, and made it easy to let him lead the conversation. We went out to an American themed bar whose owners were quite pleasant, and I translated the stories that the other intern was telling me to them. I will not reproduce those stories here. It was because of going out both Friday night and Saturday night that my Sunday was made simple. I stayed mostly inside and read The day previously I bought ルックバック by 藤本タツキ and read it in one sitting; I have not read any Manga seriously before, besides three volumes of Death Note in English when I was thirteen. It was enjoyable but maybe simple; I had heard about it secondhand due to the success of the author’s more recent serial series チェンソーマン, and had seen the one-off I read in the Starbucks near 中目黒. or watched videos.

On Saturday afternoon I walked through 中目黒, which was quite beautiful and cooler than the city center due to the tree-cover and river. I visited COW BOOKS, which had cute custom merchandise, which I did not buy, as well as the aforementioned Tsutaya/Starbucks combination by the main station. The line by the station complex was not, as I initially thought, for the Starbucks, but for a small possibly pop-up store nested next to it called ‘I’m donut?” I will admit that the donuts did look delicious, and if I am there again I may wait for one, or try to arrive when they are less busy. I have begun to notice habits in my shopping (or more accurately existence in stores, as I often buy quite little) and will try to reproduce them as I become more sure. As a specific case, for the small square shops with central tables and wall-shelves, I tend to orbit many times, rather than searching each wall thoroughly in sequence. I wonder if this makes me look indecisive or non-committal to the shop-keeps, who by design can see me at all times during perusal. It is easier in the massive shops, like the Shibuya Loft I visited before meeting my colleague on Saturday night, and which had seven floors and an attacked 無印良品. From their stationery floor (B1F) I bought a canvas book cover for the A6 novels I have been picking up, and inspected the selection of expensive and fashionable ほぼ日手帳 (I will weigh picking one up for the 2023 year if any of the special editions compel me). All of this commerce and eating have had the intended effect of dulling some sense that I am not doing things, or that I am drifting off some intended course. The remains of a day spent drinking or shopping (or both, in alternation) are crumpled little achy things, I am finding, but they are still immersive to arrange on a shelf the next morning, or to peel apart in private. I can see something about the bleak possibilities of daily lives much different (and perhaps even arguably less bleak, less anhedonic, less sessile) than my own. Maybe I can become someone who goes to pop-up shops, or who follows the latest special releases of MUJI or Seiko or Nintendo or Sanrio or KAPITAL or Jump or some small local chain of cafes whose point card is extremely worth it. I could become a trainspotter or Whiskey connoisseur or someone who makes their own 梅酒 or grows rare plants in a contraption of my own devise.

This feels unfocused, but I will give this freedom to myself because it is almost my birthday. I bought a collection of small treats at the nearby supermarket that should be nice. Apparently they make one of my favorite candies コーヒービート in popsicle form, and this has brought me a little joy. Something very simple inside of birthdays makes it easy to feel like a child. Like a fricking neonate.