MGO3, Day 8 & 9: You must become one with the fish
I still haven't had unagi don
Talking points: The need for average food, Ryuichi Sakamoto is the GOAT, Special socks, Walking without a destination, 24 hour stationery stores
“Do you have Daniel Caesar?”
I’d been talking to Yozo, the owner of EAD RECORDS, about the sound properties of wood. Or he’d been telling me about its qualities, and I’d been nodding along with a customary mmm hmmm delivered low and assenting, when the young lady came in, looked at a record or two, and asked her question.
Ah sorry no, Yozo told her, and without further clarification she thanked him and left. That would have been amazing, I said, if you had it. Yozo laughed, yes it would have been good. I wonder if she’s just going into every record shop, asking for Daniel Caesar. I hope she is.
He laughed again, but I didn’t mean it unkindly. It really would have been amazing if EAD had Daniel Caesar because it holds, at most, 200 records and no modern r&b. But she wasn’t to know that and this quest is probably the last time she’ll not know about independent record stores having small, curated selections, the last time she’ll just go into any shop with the hope they’ll have what she wants.
The beautiful antithesis of the internet, the best reason to go into a physical store at all - that little bit of hope.
It reminded me of the time my sister called bookstores because I wanted to read the original, unabridged version of The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern.1 I don’t know how many bookstores we ended up calling but it was a non-zero amount. I also don’t know how many of the store clerks we spoke to had any idea about the truth, but if any did they didn’t give it up. All of them said they didn’t currently have the original, and offered to call us if it ever showed.
Known in the area
Every morning in Tokyo, other than Christmas Eve, I go to Paddlers Coffee shortly after they open at 7:30AM. They were closed on the 24th not because it’s a holiday but because they’re always closed on Tuesdays. A lot of things are closed on Tuesday in Tokyo, maybe worth considering when you’re planning when to be here.
When I’m in full fantasy mode, which involves no longer being in thrall to the $$$ of big tech, I imagine owning a place like Paddlers (which I suppose would require my continued thrall…). It has an area for art shows and pop-up shops. It has a vaguely Northern Quebec aesthetic. Its music is exclusively on vinyl.
By day 2 the staff already remembered me. On day 3 I was asked, same as yesterday?
To my list of having a camera and an Instagram account I will now add, go to the same place more than once.
Things I did not expect to happen in Japan
Being bonked on the head by a railway gate. This happened at the end of a crossing, when I guess my guard was down. But in reality I’d missed we were in a railway crossing at all, or that a train might come. And then also my assumption that here, in Japan, the gates would be… clever? And not bonk me on the head?
Having an average meal. Then having another one. I don’t mean average for Japan, which I’ve said repeatedly beats most of the world’s best, but actually average on like a global scale. I mean the kind of food you eat and think, well yes that’s food. Here it was a bean soup where the beans had seemingly only just been introduced to the soup a minute prior to its serving. They were blessedly free from cooking. The second meal I’ll only describe as functional.
Sleeping for 12 hours. This isn’t a bad thing, but definitely unexpected. I’ve slept a ton since coming here, and while some of that can be chalked up to convalescence, I think at this point I just really, really enjoy sleep. And likely super needed it. I went to bed at 6pm, a full 7 hours before I normally do. At this rate I’ll be going to bed before I get up again…
Otherwise
I don’t want to say too much about the Ryuichi Sakamoto show at the Musum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, because I hope it will travel to where you are and you should try and go in as ignorant as possible. I will say I felt transformed by it, and inspired, and a little sad.
I am writing this from Matsumoto, about 160km North of Tokyo and the gateway to the Japanese Alps. I need to decide whether I’ll make the somewhat convoluted journey to a nature base so I can undertake a two hour snowshoe hike to a frozen waterfall. It all sounds good in theory, but my grasp on the specifics are a bit spotty and I have no idea how much I needed to book in advance. So there’s a pretty high potential of long walk = ham sandwich. But then, why else are we here?
Why indeed.
If you’ve never read The Princess Bride, William Goldman’s conceit is the story is read to him by his grandfather who, with creative flair, live-edited the weighty tome into a swashbuckling classic for his sick grandson. Goldman then gets the book for his son, who finds it very boring. On reading it for the first time he discovers his grandfather’s artistry and determines to produce his own version true to his childhood experience.