Tokyo Gets In

Tokyo gets into people differently than Berlin does. Berlin can ruin you—it’s the first good city for a lot of people, the one that makes you realize you can actually leave home and be happy somewhere. But Tokyo is something else. Teresa came back from Tokyo a few years ago talking about it like she’d taken acid, like something in her neurology had permanently shifted. Kiki’s there now and her messages have the same quality—this glazed, half-present tone of someone who’s been fundamentally rewired. She keeps sending photos of subway stations and vending machines and apologizing for how these things mean nothing to anyone else. That’s how you know it’s real.

I can’t get there. Not right now. The money isn’t there, the time isn’t there. But Berlin’s doing this thing in November called the Japarade, this whole festival built around Japan, and I’m going to go even though I know it won’t be the same. It’ll have exhibitions, performances, food, artists like Satoshi Fujiwara and Maki Shimizu. All the people who’ve actually been inside the thing that made Kiki and Teresa the way they are now. And me standing in a room full of objects and ideas pointing toward a place I can’t afford to go.

The weird part is I don’t even care anymore if it’ll actually help me understand Tokyo better. I just want to be in the room with people who understand why it matters. That seems like enough.