Today in things I can't believe I am doing
Okay, so (slaps table) here’s the deal. The last time I went to Japan, I got detained three times at Haneda on the way back because there was apparently a pandemic flourishing in China & Italy at the time, and I apparently have an Italian passport. It was March 10, 2020. I landed, came home, and within hours had booked an infinitely rebookable ticket for a year out, because the pandemic was scheduled to last for precisely six weeks and truly what was the risk.
Three rebookings later, we are here, in this place, at the center of a karmic reckoning. Look. Look at this. From March 22 until April 09, I will be in Japan, on vacation, during a time when, for my business & personal life, I would really prefer not to be.
But I’m not rebooking this a fourth time. And it’s cherry blossom season. I know the country will be thronged with tourists. I know, roughly, what I am getting myself into. This is my fourth rodeo. One stammers through the language barrier, bows, apologizes, apologizes again in a different way, and hurtles their corporeal form around a very large island in a wonderstruck fever dream.
I’m spending precisely one day in Kyoto and one day in Tokyo for the pics, and then I’m taking the shinkansen north, and gliding across the north coast of Honshu for most of the rest of the time. I will be profoundly off the grid. Mostly I will be staring at trees, breathing. I don’t know why I am doing this, but I’m doing this.
There will be no text while I am in Japan. None at all. To make up for it, there will be slightly more text before & after Japan. I won’t be answering emails, checking my phone, or thinking of you at all. I will be thinking of Japan, because I will be in Japan.
Certainly this will produce good text. Japan is a place you go where you want to mine story. Craig knows this, what with his home on top of a very large story quarry and all.
I remember the guy whose sake bar I went into in Kyoto. I asked for something sweet, thinking a Junmai would work. He leaned in, and slowly, in a low voice, said You know nothing. I proceeded to get a 3-hour masterclass on sake varietals & vintages, tasting some of the wildest things I’ve ever had.
I remember taking a ferry to an impossible island full of contemporary art, getting selfies in Yayoi Kusama sculptures that faced a beach.
I remember the cocktail bar manned by two guys in matching Acronym jackets. One had arm tattoos – a rarity in Japan – and both were just happy to see me, wondering how I found them, grateful that I was part of their journey.
I remember walking through the Meiji shrine in silence the day after I landed.
I can’t wait to see what comes next.