Chiaki’s dead, comes a quiet voice from the other side of the table. Ichika’s eyes search for sympathy, but Kana doesn’t understand a word. Chiaki… which Chiaki?Chiaki Sano? Ichika replies. We were in the same class.The curly-haired one? Ichika nods. What happened?I don’t know. She didn’t leave a note.She killed herself?Yes. With a door handle, at her parents’ house. She used her Mac charger.Was the cable long enough?No idea.
The moment I first spotted the film’s poster in Shimokitazawa, I knew I had to see Desert of Namibia. Kana’s profoundly empty gaze—I wasn’t entirely sure whether it reminded me more of myself or of certain people from my earlier life. A lack of empathy seemed to have been widespread both in my hometown and in my heart. And even today I catch myself wearing that same empty, expressionless look of complete indifference on my face—even when I’m among people I actually like.
Desert of Namibia premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique Prize and made Yoko Yamanaka, at 27, the youngest woman ever to receive the honor. It’s a prize that feels both apt and slightly beside the point. Desert of Namibia is precisely the kind of film that prizes were invented for: formally daring, emotionally unruly, and stubbornly, almost defiantly, itself.
Yumi Kawai plays Kana with an authority that immediately commands the screen. She’s 21 years old, employed at a laser hair removal salon in Tokyo, and perpetually on the edge of some unnamed outburst. She drifts between two men—Honda, a dependable real estate agent who cooks her meals and keeps the household intact with patient, almost desperate affection, and Hayashi, a free-spirited artist whose charisma masks a capacity for cruelty that mirrors her own. She doesn’t choose between them so much as move between worlds, carrying her restlessness like weather.
Yoko Yamanaka, who made her debut feature Amiko as a teenager in 2017 on a budget of roughly $2,500—a fifth of which reportedly went toward repairing a car she totaled driving to the shoot—has grown into a filmmaker of uncommon assurance. Where her debut crackled with the quick-cut energy of a YouTube vlog, Desert of Namibia holds. It lingers. It zooms, slowly and with maddening patience, onto a face that gives little away. Shot in a boxy 4:3 format by cinematographer Shin Yonekura, the film has the claustrophobic texture of a life lived in small rooms: hair removal cubicles, cramped kitchens, the narrow hallways of shared apartments.
This formal restraint is not mere affectation. It mirrors Kana’s own condition. She’s a young woman surrounded by men—professionally, romantically, medically—who cannot quite hear her, even when she’s screaming. When Honda returns from a work trip having visited a hostess bar at his boss’s insistence, their subsequent confrontation is rendered with scorching honesty: the apologies that pile up and begin to mean nothing, the moment Kana’s quiet fury curdles into something physical and irrational, the way the film refuses to adjudicate between victim and perpetrator. They’re both, somehow, both.
The film’s also, intermittently, very funny. Kana’s workplace scenes at the salon—where she and a colleague speculate freely about why an elderly woman is getting a bikini wax, or where she’s fired for informing a customer that she’s been wasting her money on cosmetic rather than medical hair removal—have the rhythm of sketch comedy, the timing of absurdist theater. A role-play argument in which Kana coaches her boyfriend on how to refuse his boss’s advances at a hostess bar gives way, without warning, into something genuinely unsettling. The tonal whiplash is intentional, a structural analogue to the instability that defines Kana’s inner life.
Midway through the film, Kana visits a therapist. The session’s one of the most acutely observed psychiatric consultations in recent cinema: the doctor’s careful probing, Kana’s sudden tangent into a hypothetical about pedophilia as a philosophical example, the awkward moment when she asks the therapist to dinner. A potential diagnosis of bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder is floated but not confirmed. Kana’s desire to understand who she is comes closest to a thesis statement in the film, delivered so quietly it could easily pass unnoticed.
The film’s final stretch tips into something stranger and more surreal: a kind of waking dream in which panda ants, campfire songs, and parallel universes intrude upon the social realism of what came before. Some viewers will find this tonal leap liberating; others will feel the ground go out from under them. Yoko Yamanaka earns neither entirely, and the film’s last act is its least controlled. But there’s something right about the incoherence. Kana, in the end, cannot be resolved into a diagnosis, a lesson, or a character arc. She simply continues, which is exactly the point.
Yumi Kawai’s performance has been compared, with some justification, to Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence. The comparison is generous but not absurd. Like Gena Rowlands, Yumi Kawai makes suffering look like electricity. Her Kana won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress in Japan and received nominations at both the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Asian Film Awards, and every honor is deserved. She carries the film on a performance that never condescends to her character, never asks for sympathy on her behalf, never explains her to us.
Desert of Namibia isn’t a comfortable film, and it doesn’t want to be. But it announces Yoko Yamanaka as one of the most necessary voices in contemporary cinema: a filmmaker capable of holding contradiction with the same uneasy, unflinching attention she turns on her impossible, essential heroine.
Video games are the only art form that can distract my self-diagnosed ADHD brain to such an extent that I don’t constantly slip into self-destructive thoughts or reach for my phone to let pseudo-social media wash over me.
My most cherished memories in life, aside from those of a sexual nature, have something to do with video games. How, as a child, I won both a Super Nintendo and a Game Boy on Austrian children’s television. How I wandered through the flea markets of the surrounding area to snag treasures big and small bearing the PlayStation logo. How I fought gods, demons, and hell-houses with a ragtag party and the last scraps of health bars, to bring well-deserved peace to the fictional world I was inhabiting at the time.
Last weekend I attended GG Bavaria in Munich. The small gaming convention in the Olympic Park can comfortably be seen as the little local sister to Cologne’s Gamescom. Here too, game developers and their fans, as well as artists, cosplayers, and obsessive Japan enthusiasts, gather year after year.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected a gaming convention to sweep me up so thoroughly. But the moment I stepped into the Small Olympic Hall, it was clear: this was no ordinary event.
GG Bavaria entered its fourth edition this year—and you could feel its confidence. The convention opened its doors as early as Friday, giving you a full long weekend to dive in. And dive in really is the right phrase: glowing screens everywhere, playable demos, colorful booths from indie studios, an Artist Alley packed with illustrators and artists, and flowing through it all a stream of people who somehow all speak the same language—the language of gaming.
What impressed me most was the density of Bavarian studios presenting their games here. You could actually talk to the developers whose game you’d just been watching someone play. That direct meeting between creators and community simply isn’t possible at large conventions like Gamescom. Games like A Webbing Journey, Medieval Frontiers, or OrbiTower—all titles I hadn’t had on my radar before, all of which surprised me in different ways.
Speaking of surprises: the Cosplay Catwalk on Sunday was a genuine highlight. Costumes at a level that made you briefly wonder how many hours of work could go into a single outfit. The energy in the room when the cosplayers take the stage is hard to put into words.
Also on Sunday, the GG Awards were presented—five prizes for outstanding indie games, covering everything from best sound to innovative game mechanics to audience favorite. The fact that Bavaria’s own Minister of Digital Affairs personally handed out one of the awards shows just how seriously the political world is now taking the games industry. And rightly so.
New to me was the Career Space—an area I nearly walked past, which turned out to be one of the most interesting at the entire convention. Universities from across Bavaria, from SAE to Macromedia to the University of Würzburg and TH Deggendorf, were represented, showcasing what students in gaming degree programs are building. Panels, Q&As, workshops—anyone seriously looking to break into the industry will find real guidance here.
Musically, the weekend kicked off with a concert by Munich band Oblivion, who blend gaming soundtracks with Balkan grooves and Nordic sounds. It sounds like a strange combination—but it works surprisingly well.
Truth be told, I was mainly at GG Bavaria to visit friends who were presenting their games there, above all Incredibug by my 3D mentor Michi, and Bardcore by Flo, Tomas, Svea, and Ludwig, which I had already playtested several times and been able to share my thoughts on—including, for example, that there weren’t nearly enough waifus on display.
In the first physics-based platformer with Metroidvania elements, you control an adorable pill bug, unite your fellow crustaceans, and rise up against a menacing smart home system. In the second, you play as a colorful troupe of bards defending your village from quirky skeletons and a black dragon.
And since I’m a total sucker for all things Japan, I of course couldn’t pass up the action-packed presentation by the local 北辰一刀流兵法 samurai school, soaking in the small and grand stories of East Asian warriors.
When the hustle and bustle of the convention got to be too much, I made myself comfortable by the lake in the sunny Olympic Park, or fled with others to the nearby supermarket to stock up on caffeinated refreshments.
In the evenings, visitors were ushered out of the hall and the party began. While we stuffed ourselves with rolls, cookies, and free drinks and created characters punished by nature on various screens, a DJ dressed in red shook the hall with nostalgic anime openings and the occasional Nintendo soundtrack. The theme songs from One Piece, Case Closed, and Neon Genesis Evangelion are bangers you otherwise only get to hear at weeb events.
The journey home was in Ludwig’s packed car, which somehow fit not just me but also Tomas, Jan, and Johanna. On the way to the next motorway service station, we chatted about university, water damage, and the pitfalls of village life. No convention is a good convention if you don’t at some point flee from it by car, right Michi?
This year’s GG Bavaria gave me the idea of maybe dropping in on Gamescom again after all. It’s been a few years since I attended—back then, thanks to AMY&PINK, I even had the privileges of a press badge and everything that came with it: access to the press area, invitations to industry parties, and not having to suffocate among the general visitors.
On the other hand, I’ve also been wanting to finally make it to Nippon Connection in Frankfurt to catch the latest films from the Land of the Rising Sun. And I’m not sure my often hard-to-predict energy levels could handle two events of this kind back to back.
All in all, GG Bavaria 2026 felt like an event that has caught exactly the right moment. The Bavarian gaming scene is growing, and this convention is growing with it. If you haven’t been yet—I’d secure tickets early next year. Good Game, Bavaria.
Philipp has probably long since forgotten why his evenings consist of sitting alone in his small apartment somewhere in Tokyo, enjoying a modest bento box with a cold canned beer, staring out the window and watching people on the other side whose lives have taken different directions.
He wonders whether they are happier. Or whether they navigate their daily lives just as lonely as he does. But his life changes rapidly when he is unexpectedly drawn into the depths of Japanese interpersonal relationships.
You have a wedding invitation, but no one to call your plus-one. Your new boyfriend wants to meet your mother, but you’re afraid she’ll embarrass you. You’re tired of going to the cinema alone every weekend, but none of your friends are film lovers.
Who hasn’t wished for an ideal companion in situations like these—someone to fill our emotional voids in uncomfortable social situations? This longing for connection is at the heart of Rental Family.
Philipp is a middle-aged American actor who moved to Tokyo after landing a big gig in a toothpaste commercial. Seven years later, the acting work has dried up, and when his agent sends him on short notice to a job requiring a black suit, he jumps at the opportunity.
When he arrives at the location, however, he discovers he has been paid to appear as a mourner at a funeral—for a man who is still alive and lying in an open casket. As the service concludes, Phillip learns that the man had hired a company to stage his own funeral so he could listen to moving eulogies about himself.
After overcoming his initial shock that such a service even exists, Phillip agrees to meet the owner of the company Rental Family and shortly afterward begins working for the firm. What follows is a journey between hopeful wishful thinking and a reality that keeps pulling him back down to earth. The deeper Philipp immerses himself in the artificial worlds of his clients, the more genuine bonds emerge—blurring the boundaries between performance and reality.
The longing for human connection represents a central social phenomenon of contemporary society, one that has found a particularly distinctive commercial expression in Japan: the so-called rental family industry. This is a well-documented phenomenon with its origins in the 1980s, which has attracted increased academic and cultural attention.
There are currently an estimated 300 such companies in Japan, whose employees—trained actors—take on the roles of parents, friends, spouses, or other close figures for an hourly fee. Particularly in urban centers like Tokyo, but also in rural areas, social isolation can be a defining experience of everyday life.
Notably, the demand for these services is primarily driven by a need for human closeness: despite the commercial nature of the interaction, clients frequently report that genuine friendships develop within the two to three hours spent together. The growth of this industry can be attributed to structural factors such as increasing loneliness, social isolation, and the persistent stigma surrounding mental health care in Japan.
Compared to Western countries—particularly the United States—mental health services in Japan are significantly less accessible, especially in terms of telehealth options. As a result, many people turn to informal support services: while rental family agency employees are not licensed professionals, they offer a form of low-threshold emotional support through empathetic listening and personal perspective.
It’s almost unsettling how much Philipp reminded me of my loneliest moments in Japan. When no one had time for me. When I was too tired to leave the house. When I was no longer sure why I was sitting here at all—alone at the other end of the world—jealously watching people become one with the city around them.
But Philipp also embodied a possible future version of myself, and my fear of becoming someone who has realized their dream of moving to Japan and building a better life there—only to end up completely alone. And how every day spent in this illusory world, corroded by false hopes and shattered dreams, costs him whatever happiness might exist somewhere else.
As Phillip begins working in the rental family industry, he quickly realizes that the relationships he enters into with his clients are far more than mere business transactions. As he becomes aware of the emotional impact of his work, he is forced to grapple with the ethical implications of his new career path.
His moral compass is put to the ultimate test when he meets Mia. Mia is being raised by a single mother who wants her daughter to attend a prestigious private school. The school’s admissions committee initially rejects the girl, however, because she does not come from a two-parent household.
Mia’s mother turns to the rental family agency to hire an actor—Phillip—to play her father in meetings with the school. But the assignment demands more from Phillip than simply appearing before the admissions committee. He must build a genuine relationship with Mia so that their connection appears authentic. And so Mia, who grew up thinking she was abandoned by her father, suddenly believes she has one—and quickly begins to form a deep attachment to him.
At its core, Rental Family is an odyssey in search of ourselves: a question of what we want, who we are, and what makes us happy—and a constant series of decisions about whether to follow the rules or break them in order to bring happiness to ourselves and others. For every new path taken offers both opportunities and risks in equal measure.
Brendan Fraser as Phillip can safely be called the perfect casting choice. His deeply emotional presence carries the film and moved me to spontaneous tears more than once. And yet, even by the end, it remains unclear who Phillip really is. He seems to perpetually stumble from one role to the next—like a man between masks.
Rental Family is a film that could only be set in Japan, serving as a mirror of that specific society. Tokyo as a stage-like diorama is a backdrop for people who hunger for fulfillment in the depths of this concrete jungle and take curious detours along the way. And not infrequently, even the providers of these wishful worlds embark on that same journey themselves.
Philipp has probably long since forgotten why his evenings used to consist of sitting alone in his small apartment somewhere in Tokyo, enjoying a modest bento box with a cold canned beer, staring out the window and watching people on the other side whose lives had taken different directions. Because now he is one of those people who has dared to take an unfamiliar path—and will hopefully be rewarded for it.
The questions that occupy me most when designing this website are: Who am I? What do I want? And what’s the point of any of this? The answers to these self-centered existential crises are not easy to find, because they shift depending on my mood and emotional state, and reveal themselves as traps whenever I finally manage to corner them and practically beg for mercy—and the enlightenment that should follow.
Then I try to remember why I started blogging in the first place. Did I want to feel important? To connect with others? To prove to the world out there that I existed? Did I simply lack alternatives, given that shortly after the turn of the millennium there was no YouTube, no podcasts, and the written word was one of the few means of carrying my thoughts, feelings, and opinions outward?
My love of blogging probably stems from the fact that I enjoyed reading books as a child, and through that developed a fairly extensive vocabulary that I wanted to express, garnished with my own stories. This ambition was barely noticed or appreciated by my teachers, but it was by people in my closer circle, who wanted to know whether—and what—I was writing about them.
My love of publishing texts on the internet is probably rooted in the knowledge, or at least the desperate hope, that people I knew were reading them. Friends I had hurt. Acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a while. Girls I was in love with. Through my blog, I could transform my longing for them into frequently very embarrassing texts, without having to address those feelings to them directly.
Perhaps this approach was somewhat cowardly, and maybe my words—saturated with heartache and world-weariness—never reached the eyes they were actually intended for. But at the very least, I had created a creative island for myself where I could do as I pleased. And that was not only incredibly liberating, but gradually became an important part of my life.
At many points along my path, I could only begin to pursue happiness again after pulling various spiraling thoughts from my head and hurling them onto digital paper, only to then blast them out into the great wide world. The nameless feeling that came with clicking Publish was somewhere between catharsis and orgasm. The more personal, honest, and emotionally naked my confessions were, the greater the relief. I’m only happy when my words change the world—at least the one I call home.
Over the decades, my blog has evolved into a diary whose intimate entries lie buried under a mountain of attention-hungry, now entirely worthless drivel. Sometimes I come across one of them and feel a little sad that it’s no longer part of this great wide world, but seems to have been erased. Perhaps I can undo that.
The questions that occupy me most when designing this website are: Who am I? What do I want? And what’s the point of any of this? I still haven’t found the answers to these self-centered existential crises, but at least I’ve begun to track them down through countless psychologically questionable acts of self-reflection—or so I hope.
It’s difficult for me to find the line between introverted solitude and extroverted self-expression. One extreme would be a diary locked in a vault, into which I write all my thoughts in secret symbols; the other, an OnlyFans account in which I expose not only myself but also my sensitive data—passwords and all. Middle grounds are hard for me to walk.
In order to design something and actually finish it to the point where I can fill it with content, I first have to strip a project’s purpose down to its essentials. And at this task—which sounds so simple yet is incredibly complicated—I have obsessively worn myself to the bone. After all, this publication is meant to represent me and my thoughts. And to achieve that, I first had to figure out who I actually was—or at least, who I no longer was.
I now want to treat this dispatch as a personal notebook, into which I can enter texts about art, music, books, technology, film, fashion, travel, games, food, and my life in general. What matters to me is that everything I write must relate to me—my thoughts, my experiences, my feelings, my dreams, my fears, my hopes, and my opinions—because otherwise it’s worthless.
Going forward, I will focus primarily on the written word. I have removed the images that used to decorate every single post, because I realized that I sometimes never published certain texts for the simple reason that, even after hours or sometimes days of searching, I couldn’t find a suitable illustration. If I want to add a photo or video to a post from now on, I will simply link to it directly within the text—life can be that simple.
As a fitting typeface, I have chosen Libre Caslon Condensed by Pablo Impallari, because it works well even on small mobile screens. In the past I always found a sans-serif counterpart for headings, timestamps, and supplementary information—but even that felt like too much in this design. Instead, I’m largely limiting myself to the various weights of my new favorite typeface. Japanese characters are the one exception, represented by two variants from the Zen family by artist Yoshimichi Ohira.
I hope that this blog—and everything I have cut, burned, and destroyed for it—will help me figure out who I am, what I want, and what any of this is for. Perhaps I need to become (again) conscious of the fact that this journal is not only the center and pivot point, but also the only constant in my otherwise chaotic life. But this can only work if it becomes a part of that life once more.
