My Old Friend, I wish we could do this forever.

Stately in Chiba. Just fun to look at for a moment and imagine talking walks in the evening when the heat of the day has faded. www.realbosoestate.jp/estate.php?n...

The face of someone who definitely did not just piss on the tatami. Nope. Definitely not.

Two consenting adults and all that. But mayonnaise is a limit never to be crossed.

“La-di-da. La-di-da. La, La. Yeah.”

Listen. The festival goes on.

I have met a handful of people I am happy to call friends and, I believe, feel similarly. I also trust people less. More wary. More guarded, despite the open book nature of how and what I choose to share what I do share. Quite content to put that blame firmly on my shoulders.

A spiderweb in fog. Kirifuri Kogen, Nikko.

In search of fall but finding fog.

I won’t pretend to know the science behind it. But soba does seem to taste better when seated outside on the engawa.

The first weekend in October. Nikko. Stopping for soba on the way to the supermarket.

A Saturday morning train. When things feel just a wee bit slower.

For the first time in over twenty years, as of this month, my wife has a new job. And for the first time in over five years, won’t always be working at home. And for the past three days he has followed her to the door when she leaves. Then just sits there for a good fifteen minutes or so.

All’s misalliance. Yet why not say what happened? Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning. We are poor passing facts, warned by that to give each figure in the photograph his living name.

The promise that is early fall. That each day does get better. Things happen. The phone rings when you don’t want it to. But it also gets better from here.

At home, attempting to pair a toy for her pleasure to an app via Bluetooth and … “More than 50 devices found”

Sunday Evening Train Reflections. Crossing the Arakawa.

A few hours of midday sky.

That time of year when, suddenly, you choose to sit in the sun.

Unedited and As it Was. The last Saturday in September.

While not the brilliant explosion of color it will be one month from now, no longer the lush greens of summer.

“Cosmo, I just want you to know; no matter what you do, you’re gonna die, just like everybody else.”

Apparently this is a well-known piece of trivia.

Kanda, Tokyo. The autumnal equinox.

If you pan out wide enough, you can actually see the world going to hell. But in this frame there is a rabbit in a doorway after dinner on a Sunday night. Two people talk about the things you talk about when you ponder things. Not sure which one you are supposed to focus on anymore.

Myoho-ji. Suginami-Ku. The last Sunday before the autumnal equinox.

Be nice to the littler ones that need your help.

“Remember this is a love-story I am telling you now.”

The sound deer make when you startle them. They sure do make it down the cliff in an enviable display of athleticism.

“Autumn has not yet come. It will be, but now it is not.”

Come and go as you wish, surely you were here first, but watch the wires please.

A slight tangent. That peculiar contemporary strain of self-help thought that implores people to cut out all toxicity, to remove negativity from their lives, allows for no bad days, no bad moments, no string of misfortune, and a conclusion in which you abandon someone when they need you the most.

One could go to any number of temples or shrines, rich with history, while in Nikko. Or not. Skip all that and just watch hockey.

The Holy Fuckness that is a big bowl of chewy noodles.

Those days of limbo. To still call it summer doesn’t quite feel right. To call it fall, not that either. Those hours at the hotel between checking out and checking in. When the lights are on in the kitchen but the sign on the door says CLOSED. *or CLOSE, for localized translations

You needn’t run, Neighbor. I would not have hurt you.

To call it irony would be an insult to Sophocles. We all participate knowingly. Never more connected yet never more alone, isolated, all those internal monologues never shared, no comfort given and … Wait, wait. Fuck. Stupid thinking voice. Hey, look! Pretty sea of clouds.

Imagining a world with taco trucks on every corner. Koenji. A Thursday Morning.

Weekend Leftovers. Not that it’s special. But this is what the day is.

And then the moon over the Weather Shrine welcomes you home.

Sunday Evening Train Reflections.

I will never stand atop Denali. An entire winter spent chasing powder in Patagonia, that too, elusive. Amassing an obscene amount of wealth to be shared, alas, not to be. But I know the joy of having perfectly paced proportions so the last bite of rice and curry is a marriage of ideal balance.

I can’t speak to things like costs or maintenance or installation. But they sure are more aesthetically pleasing than concrete.

Rice drying in the sun. Tochigi Prefecture. The first weekend in September.

Nantai-San. Usually gets shyer as the morning goes on.

A Sunday Morning. Torn between baseball and the obligation of greeting the neighbors.

I would like it be known that on this, the sixth of September, a Saturday, my wife has readied her first hot water bottle of the season and, upon asking her what temperature she thought it might be, quickly and confidently said “thirteen degrees.”

Those quieter temples. And how you kinda sorta just might understand why it is they decided to build them where they did all those years ago.