The Heartbeat Archives
Les Archives du Coeur is a collection of recorded heartbeats housed in a small building on the island of Teshima in Japan’s Inland Sea, a ten minute walk from Karato Port. A walk that goes through woods, past crumbling old houses, faded shop signs, moored fishing boats, and past a couple of shrines. The small … Continue reading »
The Art Islands of the Inland Sea
Note: Around twenty years ago the small fishing islands of the Japanese Inland Sea, who were faced with an aging population, declining birthrate and disappearing industry, caught the attention of the art-loving billionaire chairman of the Benesse Corporation, Soichiro Fukutake. Fukutake’s donations helped revitalise the economy of the islands (particularly Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima) by … Continue reading »
Where Are We Now?
I have been walking through Tokyo to the rhythm of David Bowie’s Where Are We Now. My walks, like the song, are a steady rereading of place names remembered, retreaded; names that are memories and walking through them just to feel their familiarity. Just walking the dead. When he sings, “had to get the train … Continue reading »
A Visit to Enoshima
Despite all the time I have spent in Tokyo, I have not taken that many day trips out of the city. I have been to Kamakura a couple of times, for example, and Nikko and Fuji Five Lakes, but that’s about it. When I lived here I preferred to go far from the city — … Continue reading »
What Roppongi is Like Now, or “Death of a Red Light District”
The house I always stay at here in Tokyo is a five minute walk to Roppongi’s main drag and the favoured lodging for the women who come to Tokyo to make their money in Roppongi’s stripclubs, hostess clubs and bars. Right now it is quiet. So quiet. Quiet enough that I can almost hear the … Continue reading »
The Streets of Tokyo
I could lose myself just wandering through Tokyo’s streets: from the back alleys bursting with tiny bars and restaurants; below the noisy underpasses, and along the wide tree-lined boulevards. When I lived in Tokyo I wandered for hours but I always had someplace to be at 8 p.m. Work. Now, I just wander, unanchored, and … Continue reading »
Tadaima!
I’m home. Back in my beloved, precious Japan for a few weeks.
A Few Scenes from Montréal
I didn’t travel as much or as far as I would have liked this year, a state of affairs perhaps perfectly encapsulated by my final trip of 2012: a few days in Canada, just a few hundred miles north of home. It was my first time in Montréal though it felt comfortably familiar, like a … Continue reading »
2012: A Year in Nonviolent Dissent
“It gets into your system … the force and power of nonviolence.” The above quotation is taken from a Guernica essay by Eamon Kircher Allen that was published in April this year. In April I had just returned from Egypt and was about to embark on a summer course through the International Center for Nonviolent … Continue reading »
