The Constorium of Greater Minds

started to read glimpses of unfamiliar japan by lafcadio hearn. hearn was the first foreign writer to really immerse himself in the culture of japan. moving there in 1890 hearn would never return to his home in america, but make a new one in his adopted homeland of japan, the country he loved so much. here’s a great quote of his in reference to yokohama - i think it pretty well sums up my feelings towards the city of tokyo.
“i could not, in those first weeks, resign myself to remain indoors and write, while there was yet so much to see and hear and feel in the sun-steeped ways of the wonderful japanese city. still, even could i revive all the lost sensations of those first experiences, i doubt if i could express and fix them in words. the first charm of japan is intangible and volatile as a perfum.”
–lafcadio hearn

Sometimes my mind wanders. I can’t move and I am connected rigidly to my chair – staring out the window at the apartments and the hills and the train track winding through the houses and disappearing behind the strip mine traveling down the peninsula. Ennui and bland contentment, a feeling of stagnation – nothing is happening. I pick up a book and read a few pages before tossing it down. I listen to my music – I feel as if I’ve heard each song a thousand times before. I pick up a different book – it bores me and I toss it to the floor. Moving to the couch I look out the window. A different view - more apartments but now I can see the bay and down the coast of the peninsula. Jetties and concrete piers and small fishing huts and phone towers. My mind is tired and my thoughts, languid, make me drowsy. This is the sickness I must fight. I change the song – I’ve heard it before. My mind wanders. I have seen the empty ocean and gazed upon the biggest sky you have ever seen, the Milky Way a brilliant streak across a canvas of midnight. I have in no way felt so marvelously alone as when I am on the sea with the black salt spray on my face and lips, the night never as immense and consuming as it is hundreds of miles from the closest human creation. I know what it is to feel insignificant, naked on Mother Nature’s blue canvas. Now I sit alone in my apartment a thousand miles away – a thousand miles away from what? I am only half the story, a man in suspended animation and I am slowly coming to terms with my longing. I need you woman. I need you to make me feel alone with you because I am tired of feeling alone without you. The city can mask my aching heart for only so long.

bud, justin and i took the shinkansen to kyoto two weeks ago…this is a video of one of the bullet trains speeding through shin-yokohama station. many more photos and videos to come.

dom and the zushi crew at havaianas bar

and of course someone HAD to go and bust out the cello

a little dinner music

upstairs at havaianas

this is what things look like after too much shochu
zushi

interesting article found via hypebeast…
Fashion’s Next Big Bang