Back to Japan
I haven’t been paying Japan nearly enough attention lately, which bothers me. It’s one of those countries that just hits different—unhinged in the best way, weird, stupidly creative, and entirely itself without apology. Somehow I let the obsession fade to nothing.
Then I caught Tokyo Drift on TV and something clicked back into place. It’s a dumb movie, but there’s something in it that works. The style, the attitude, the whole vibe—it reminded me exactly why I got hooked on that particular version of Japan in the first place. That aesthetic, that confidence in being thoroughly weird.
Around the same time I stumbled onto these Polaroids from a Japanese Halloween party in 1964. They’re perfect. Exactly the kind of beautiful weirdness that Japan does better than anywhere else—this completely off-kilter sense of style that somehow makes perfect sense. Nothing borrowed, nothing trying to fit in, just its own thing entirely.
That’s what I want to pay attention to again. The culture, the strange stuff, all of it. There’s something about the way Japan embraces being absurd and sincere at the same time that nothing else quite captures. I’ve been neglecting it too long.