Dear Diary: The Distance to Shibuya
First, the photo. I owe an apology for it. Not to Frank from iHeartBerlin—Frank is the best photographer I know, genuinely—but to anyone who had to look at what the camera found: the gray hairs that internet comment sections gave me, the beard I still haven’t learned to trim properly, the slow accumulation of weight, the eye wrinkles that go all the way down to my cheekbones, and that expression—that specific expectant look, like a sleazy literature professor about to produce an even sleazier candy cane from somewhere. All of it accurate. Except the Frank part.
That sentence was basically the most exciting thing that’s happened to me lately. Going to the Witte de With Festival in Rotterdam with Thang already feels like three years ago. Since then it’s been home and the library, grinding through work, trying to earn as much money as possible in as little time as possible. In practice this means: no excess of any kind. My social life is Ute next door, who has some hearing issues and makes them everyone else’s problem; my beverage of choice is off-brand cola; my adventure is the round trip to the nearest subway station and back. Pure glamour.
The reason for all the austerity is Tokyo. I want to get back as fast as I can—back to the only city on earth that makes me feel genuinely, deeply right in a way nowhere else does. I will kiss the Shibuya crossing the moment I land, assuming I’m not hit by a bus first, which Tokyo will attempt.
In the meantime I went with Janos and Anika to DÖGA, a Berlin exhibition dedicated entirely to the döner kebab, which I’d imagined would be a full sensory event—music, color, the smell of meat doing what it should—and which turned out to be several billion people queuing in front of four döner stands, half of which ran out of meat within two minutes of opening. I was too defeated to even complain about it properly.
Parties, fucking, pills—the life. Or something resembling it. Now back to studying kanji, a writing system I’m increasingly convinced was invented specifically to drive me toward a nervous breakdown. Ayaka, please be waiting naked on the QFRONT rooftops when I arrive. Or in Japanese: 私のためにQFRONTの屋上で裸で待っていてください。