The only stain from my Osaka days was my League binge. Please never forget, everybody, fuck League of Legends. Fuck Overwatch, fuck competitive gaming, fuck video games. Fuck Fortnite. Fuck all of that shit. Fuck vice. Read books, lift weights, play guitar, write a novel. But, there is no doubt, fuck competitive gaming. I can’t just say fuck video games because some games are really cool and rewarding to play. Samorost 3, Pikmin, Zelda, etc. But the modern competitive video game that cares only about stealing your time and attention and money, only about getting as much as they possibly can from you, fuck them. Fuck them so hard. Don’t ever think that they are not trying to fuck you over. They are.

*Depressed at the cubicle. There will only be two more days of this.*

The other day, I threw my mouse in the trash. I’m thinking about that right now, because I’m somewhat hoping that my roommates haven’t taken out the trash, in which case I can dig to the bottom of that full can, get my mouse back, and play League of Legends tonight. That’s what I’m thinking about this morning, now, at 11:37am, from my cubicle. (And you know what? I fucking did it. I pulled my mouse out of the bottom of that jam packed can, covered in celery juice and coffee grounds, and I wiped it off, and I played six horrible games of League of Legends. Filled with idiots, filled with trolls, with people being angry, people being mean, people being sad. I played until 2 in the morning, spent 4 more hours on the computer after a full day of being on the computer, and then went to bed watching someone else play more League. The League formula is so powerful that it made me pull my trash mouse out of the trash. That’s addiction. That’s an addict relapsing. Fuck you League. I will never play you again. You suck asshole, and you people who run League, you fucking suck too. You never get any more of my precious time again. I will never say the words again, like He Who Must Not Be Named. The Game That Must Not Be Named. That is what you are, now. You have achieved Harry Potter supervillian status. The Game That Must Not Be Named. The most hated enemy. And I will never play any game like you. I will never touch a multiplayer competitive game for as long as I live. I don’t want to. I have no interest in it. And I will not. 1/24/2024. Remember this day. The final day, the last day I was a slave. The last day I allowed myself to be taken advantage of. When you play these games, you are not the player. You are being played. (Oh, that’s so good.) January 24th, 2024.

I’m sitting here, and after having gone through a period of just straight up depression, probably from a lack of sunlight and any social interaction or physical movement, basically there has been no joy yet in my day, except when Mr. Shimoyama had a few words with me, and a moment on the train where the train lurched forward and I slipped in water and did a little ballerina pirouet, spinning exactly 360 degrees in one second and somehow perfectly catching myself on the railing, to which I made a witty comment and not a single person of the many people around me on this packed train had any response to at all, and I now have some energy, having had some coffee, and am waking up. I am waking up, and I am waking up in my cubicle, which is something of a desert of the senses, you could say, and am now once again retreating into the oasis of my mind for my mental water and dates, that are entertainment and stimulation.

I don’t really have a pressing task right now, I already managed one. And the problem with these computer tasks that require no creativity is that they are not going to provide you any kind of juice, or gas, to get you going, and inspire you. Conversely, they require energy and motivation. But right now, I’m out of that. The tank is empty, you can say. And so, I daydream.

I was thinking about my time in Osaka, actually. I was thinking about the time I spent at Tully’s Coffee, at Tennouji Park. When I think about Osaka, the two months that I spent there, living in Toyo Hotel (which was really more of a hostel), I think about a lot of things. At the time, I did not appreciate how transformative of a period of time that was, but the more that I go back to those memories, I see how precious they are. Like Thailand, they cost me so little, and are worth so much. I didn’t really know what I was doing in Osaka. Actually, that’s not true. I had just been in Hokkaido, trying to force myself into a life that wasn’t working for me, and after forcing, and scheming, and carrying out plans that just weren’t working, I gave up on the game, and relinquished myself of that vision. I left, and I decided that I would now simply give myself up to the river of life, for some time, without planning, as that only seemed to get me into trouble, and cause me trouble, and I did that, and ended up in Osaka. I went to Osaka because I wanted to be somewhere else in Japan, and I wanted to try a big city, and my Japanese friends told me I would like Osaka more than Tokyo. They said it was more of my style, and when I did a little Googlin’, and found a Tokyo vs. Osaka post, and saw that Tokyo had in its corner, “History, food, art, entertainment, anime culture, sports, etc. etc. etc.” (basically, everything ever) and then on the Osaka side, only one thing, “Comedy”, I knew Osaka was for me. I have so many stories from these two months in Osaka, so many good stories. I was a completely free man living in hostel with international travelers, mostly young people but there was a mix of everybody, longer term students living there (Mao and “Miss Tiger”, Yuko Woo, Chinese girls), a teacher, half New Zealander half Canadian, who had been there for four years who was exactly a modern day hippie hobbit (short, hairy, always barefoot, and with long dreads)(and just to give you an idea of the level of swag that this man was at, he wore the Okarina from The Legend of Zelda, Okarina of Time around his neck, 24/7).. and there was.. god what was his name, KEN, it was Ken, Ken was a real character man. I don’t even know what the hell Ken’s story was. I can’t remember where he was from, I think he was from Arizona, and what the hell he was doing at Toyo, I have no idea. When I first met Ken, I have to say (sorry Ken) I thought he was cracked. He was always asking questions and I almost felt like he was a little nosy. But very quickly Ken grew on me, and I saw that he was just goofy and easygoing, and always in a good mood. You know, with people being so complicated and moody and difficult, anyone who is always in a good mood is a winner in my book. That’s a person that is so welcome in my life. I need it, because I’m fucking moody sometimes. I’m not one of those people, and that’s alright. The happy people, the people who are always having a good time, who keep things in perspective, and are not overly preoccupied with all of the many great horrors and injustices of the world, who are always grounded in the here and now, who are up for talking about anything, who keep it light, they are winners in my book, and they are very valuable to me. Ken was one of those people, and so was the other guy, and they were buddies.. Noah. I have to remember these names. Noah, my god man, what a character. I also thought he was just a total goober (I’m sorry Noah). I mean, you have to be a little crazy to commute anywhere six hours a day, which is what he was doing in Australia, to his college. He said that was normal, but man, that can’t be normal. There’s just no way that’s normal. That’s pretty fucking insane. He would drive three hours every morning, and three hours back at night. You would think he was making that up right, but I swear Noah wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t even an exaggerator. He just actually did stuff like that. He had big square glasses. We both showed up at Toyo at about the same time, and he was looking to become an English teacher, and he got a job while I was there, and was working out of the hotel. I remember his first interview, he told me that he was interviewed by a anime cat, and he couldn’t take it seriously. I thought that was hilarious. I could never have taken it seriously either. I mean, if someone decides to have an interview with you, and they use an animated cat to do it, you don’t take that seriously, because that’s not serious. That’s a dumbass company right there.

“Miss Tiger” Yuko Woo was one of my favorites. We had a special bond. She was hot for me. She was like my old Chinese wife, in a way. We just acted like an old married couple. We had really great banter. She would just give it to me straight, and you know I love a woman who gives it to me straight. She once asked me, “Why you wear glasses? You look like nerd.” And took them off of me. “That’s better.” That was Yuko Woo. Her Zodiac animal was the tiger, and she was talking about it one day, I can’t remember why, I think because we had a Chinese New Year’s party together, and that year it was the Year of the Mouse, and she said she was a tiger, so I started calling her Miss Tiger, and it was really very fitting for her, and then she asked what I was, and I told her boar, because that’s what I am, and then she started calling me “Mister Pig.” And I told her many times, I am not a pig, I am not born in the year of the pig, that’s a different Zodiac animal, no, I am a boar, a mighty boar, with tusks, roaming the wilds and goring things, and she would say, “Ok Mister Pig.” Yuko was into partying every night, or on most nights at least, and I was always disappointing her, because I almost never went out, and at least not with the big group, or whoever she was going out with that night. I did still go out, because it was the first time I had ever lived in a place with a real nightlife, and I experimented with that, and I gotta say in the end, it’s mostly just not for me. I’m just not the type, I guess, because most of the times that I went out, I didn’t really feel like it was ever really a success, or something that was good for me, even with all of the meeting people and the seeing things, but I did get stories, and those are always worth something. I did go out with Woo a few times, and every time I did, she would just get drunk and dance, and she would do a little wavy dancing, kind of just standing still and waving back and forth, like kelp in the ocean, just vibing out.

I’ll save my going out stories for later, I guess. I haven’t talked about Mao yet, who is the last of the main characters of Toyo, the main residents, who were there for the entire of my two months. You see, I learned from the hippie hobbit Matt, that you could actually live at Toyo, you could become a resident, and they would move you up to the top floor, the resident’s floor, and you had elevated status, and paid a monthly rate that was even cheaper, and the hotel was already so cheap. This hotel was so popular because it was so cheap, it was notorious for being cheap, because, I learned after I was there, from the hippie hobbit Matt, that we were living in the worst ghetto in Japan, called Nishinari. It was a famous place, and Japanese people knew the name, and when I asked some of my Japanese friends about it, they were like, “Eeee? Nishinari no?? Nande?” (“What? You’re in Nishnari? Why?”) And it’s funny, and I think about this a lot now, because I lived in the worst ghetto in Japan, and it is incomparable to New York City. The worst ghetto in Japan is by comparison the most blessed and greatest paradise on earth compared to New York City. That’s no exaggeration. I saw only one homeless man in Nishinari, and he was doing great. He had a fort of boxes, he had a nice spot on the curb, warm clothes. He wasn’t begging, he wasn’t bothering anybody. I passed by that man almost every day, on my walk to Tully’s, and Tully’s is the reason why I’m even writing about this at all this morning. Tully’s Coffee at Tennouji Park is the best place in Osaka, or if you want to include the whole park, Tennouji Park is the best place in Osaka.

I was thinking about Tully’s Coffee because this morning, I put a Tully’s coffee cup into our office Keurig machine. I fantasize about some of the best moments when I’m in shitty places, like a cubicle, and the New York City subway. So you can understand why I fantasize about Thailand and Japan almost every day that I’m here in New York. And when I think about my time in Osaka, and all of the things that I did, and everywhere that I went, the purest, most joyful memory I have, which is almost a physical sensation that I can feel when I conjure up the memories, is me walking around Tennouji Park, in the clear, blue winter sky, with all of the smiling, happy Osakans, and hanging out at that Tully’s Coffee. It was only a short walk from the Hotel, and I went there almost every day, in the mornings, for most of the two months of my Osaka stay. There was one period of time where I fell into the void that is League of Legends, where I completely forsook the outside world, and fully assumed the identity of Kindred, Lamb and Wolf, the hunter, and it was not worth it, and fuck League of Legends, but that’s what I did. And I knew I had given up on the physical world when I stopped making my Tully’s pilgrimage, because that was a very important part of my life then. It was a routine that brought me great joy. It was a sacred place for me, a place for me to be. And what was so special about Tully’s, and Tennouji Park? Nothing, really. That’s the magic of it. It was just an ordinary place, an ordinary park, with happy people, some futsal courts, some park events, a michi-no-eki with the local produce, a zoo nearby, a nice Italian restaurant, super popular place, and Tully’s. The nicest coffee shop in the world. This Tully’s was big, and the walls were all glass, so you could see outside. You could watch all of the people in the park walk by, smiling, living their lives. The coffee shop was always packed, probably 30 or 40 people could all be in there sitting at once. There was a table with plastic dividers, for covid, that could seat up to 8 people, and that’s where the computer people, the people that were there to do business, would mostly hang out. Next to that, there were six armchairs, with small square tables in between, for sitting across from a friend or with a group, and chatting. There were then all along the back and on the other side, small tables with two chairs across from each other, lining the store. And in the very back corner there was a low table with two couches on opposite sides. There were three ways in or out. The front main entrance, and then one entrance to the left side. The one on the right, nobody came in that way, but you could leave through it. The park itself was like a giant rectangle, with a large grass area in the center. Man, there was even a roller rink and a small dog park. I mean, when I really think about it, that park had everything you could want. It had just about everything for everybody. And surrounding the park was the greater Nishinari area, that had all of the shops, huge malls, the shoutengai (the covered, long outdoor malls, with rows and rows of shops), the zoo, Shinsekai to the west, and the tower, in the middle of Shinsekai that was like a small Tokyo tower, a giant Don Quijote, a huge, multistoried onsen facility.. Man. I miss that like crazy. It was this sprawling, exciting microcosm. To the north of the park there was a stately art museum that was unfortunately closed while I was there, and a Japanese garden, a big one. So, you could take your pick, where you wanted to go, what you wanted to do. There were so many places to play, just in that little few square miles of Osaka. And then we were right on the train line, the subway, and not far from Toyo and the park, you could ride the faster rails, that could take you the farther places, like Kyoto and Kobe and Nara. Those trains ran on the dime, they ran on the money, they never failed me once, and I rode them often. They never failed once. God, I hate to rag on New York City, I really do. It just makes me depressed. But, this city is just so fucked compared to Osaka. So fucked compared to Japan. I just can’t help but think about it.

I didn’t tell you what I paid to live at Toyo, either. It was 30,000 yen a month. Do you know much that is in dollars? I’ll tell you. It’s like $220. That’s how much I paid, in a month, to live there at Toyo.

I would go to Tully’s Coffee almost every day. If the weather was particularly bad I might not, but I would still try. The best memories I have of Osaka are of walking past all of those happy people in the park, seeing the soccer players, and the couples, and the parents, the kids, the groups of young guys and girls, living their lives, and then going into that Tully’s, paying my 300 yen for a coffee, and taking a seat amongst the Tullians. I was a regular for sure, and the staff knew me. I am charming, you know, and make small talk, and generally like to have positive interactions with people, so it wasn’t long before we were chatting, and they were regular friends to me. There were four staff members that I would regularly interact with, but my two besties were the manager, who was almost always there, a woman in her 30’s or early 40’s, and Kento, a young guy who lived in California for a year and had amazing English. We would always have a laugh together, over anything at all. He always had something fun to say to me. I remember he said to me once, that I was confusing the other staff girls, because I would sometimes speak in English, and sometimes in Japanese, and they didn’t know which was which. It’s common to speak in both languages when you’re both familiar with them, but for a low-level speaker of one of the two languages, the switching is quite confusing. The other two members were younger girls, who I never could get much out of, but they knew me, and they knew what I wanted, which was always a medium black coffee, until I realized that the medium was just too much for me, and I switched it to small, which was I remember a momentous decision, that I’m sure was talked about by all of them, when Kento said, “Medium?” And I said, “Make it small this time.” I’m laughing so hard writing this. It’s actually true though, that’s how it went. And he was like, “Oh!” I would always ask what kind of coffee they had today, and they would just start telling me, so I didn’t have to ask. It’s the little things, you know. I felt like I had really reached a certain status, it was like a badge of honor, when the manager came over to me one day, when I was sitting in the back, and she told me that one of the seats at the 8 unit table where the Tullians went to do their work sat, she told me one of those seats was available now. She knew that I always liked to sit there. She noticed that, you know. She knew my habits, she knew me. That was sweet. It’s really the little things.

They ran a perfect ship. It was always clean, people were always taken care of. That Tully’s was so popular for a reason. And they always played jazz, good jazz, like jazz trios, jazz quartets. That’s my favorite kind of jazz. I remember they were once going through a jazz Harry Potter CD, for maybe a week or two, they were playing Harry Potter jazz. I loved it. I mean, jazz, coffee, nice, happy people. Not hard to see why Tully’s Coffee was my favorite place to go. It doesn’t take much. And you could find anybody in Tully’s. There were often other foreigners. There were Japanese moms, girlfriends, couples, students, families, businesspeople, old friends, kids. Everybody was there, hanging out, living life, having a good time. Always good conversation and smiles. One of the young worker girls, she didn’t have much English, and was a little on the shy side, and I remember once walking in, and walking up to the counter, and there was a foreign family there trying to explain to her their complicated order with all these bells and whistles, and I could see the girl was having a tough time with them, and I thought, This is my moment. Leave it to me. And I stepped in and saved the day. The mom said, “Thank you so much, we’re from Hong Kong, I thought Japanese people would speak more English!” And I translated their complicated order with the bells and whistles, like no ketchup on the wiener, that kind of thing, and everybody was happy, and the shy girl was grateful, and I felt like I had performed a great service. It’s nice when you get to use your language skills to actually help people. It’s a very satisfying thing.

The only sad thing about Tennouji Park, and the Tully’s – the only problem with it, was that it wasn’t my culture, and it wasn’t my people. The Japanese never intentionally made me feel that way, but the language barrier did. And, I never felt this way when I was in Ozu, or in Kumamoto at all, because it was rare that I was ever surrounded by masses of people. I was usually in smaller groups, where I would be, you know, 5% of the population at the least, but I also had a role, like in the classroom, I was a part of it, being a teacher. I think that was actually the biggest difference, because while I was in Kumamoto, I had a role, and I had an identity, and that gave me a reason to be in Japan. There was something I was doing that tied me to Japan, and made me a part of it. But once that was gone, I felt that there was nothing now that really bonded me to Japan, and I didn’t have a place in it anymore. And I started to feel that when I would hang out in the park, and at Shinsekai, and at the mall, and on the giant circular crosswalk in the sky on the intersection between the park and malls and giant buildings, and I would be surrounded by Japanese people, hundreds of Japanese people, and then there would be me. Just me. And I would feel it, then, that I was different. It was like, wow, this is a lot of Japanese people. In fact, every one of them is Japanese. And, I’m not Japanese. I’m different from them. Sometimes that’s a fine feeling, and it comes with a lot of perks. Most of the time, really. It’s fun to be exotic. It’s just that, eventually, you don’t want to feel that. Or, you don’t want to feel that way all the time. You want to be exotic, of course, but you also want to just be normal. That sounds like something that celebrities could really relate to. You just don’t always want to stand out. Sometimes, you just want to be like everybody else. And when I wasn’t thinking about how I wasn’t Japanese, which was actually 99% of the time, the language barrier would often remind me, because even with the level of Japanese that I had, which was that I could have a conversation with anybody, I wasn’t nearly fluent. I would still make mistakes, I wouldn’t understand what they would say, I would have to ask them to repeat themselves, all of those things that just get in the way of normal communication, clunk things up, and remind you that you’re different. Those little, passing interactions, are very important for relationships. The fleeting interactions. You may have just a small moment to make an impression, to say what you have to say, to show some personality. Being unable to do that, it’s hard. Having something you want to say, but not being able to say it, right there on the spot, or trying and failing, it’s just hard. I had just been back to the US for the first time in years that fall as well, and I remembered, or really, I learned for the first time, that feeling of just being so easily enmeshed in a culture, of existing so easily in it, being able to understand everyone and everything, knowing what they’re going to say before saying it, being able to handle every interaction nearly effortlessly, was just so.. refreshing. So easy. Like being a fish in water again. That was really the only problem with Tennouji Park, with Tully’s Coffee. By extension, that was the only problem with my Japanese life, then. Otherwise, it was just about perfect.

Man, I really miss Japan.

It’s weird to say this, and it’s weird that I feel this way, but I do. I have very few regrets in life. I actually might only have one, and it’s this. They say you only regret the things you didn’t do, and so far for me in this life, that holds true. I wish I would have told my Tully’s friends that I was leaving Osaka. I didn’t tell them goodbye, I didn’t tell them I was leaving Osaka. And when I think about it, it feels like I just disappeared into the night, vanished without an explanation. Time passed, they wondered where I was, if I would ever come back, and then eventually, stopped thinking about me. I wish I would have taken the time to tell them goodbye, and thanks for everything. Thanks for running a great store, thanks for the friendly conversation, thanks for caring about me, thanks for giving me a place to go, a place to be.

When I think about Osaka, it’s those moments at Tully’s and in Tennouji Park that come back to me, but there was another place where great memories were made, and that was in the Toyo common room, where I made so many friends, encountered so many characters, had so many great conversations. I really did make so many friends. Genesis, the German med-student that failed her med school exam and was taking a haitus, Jean, the French beatmaker who quit his engineering job and was looking for a new lease on life, Ben, the Scot, the sustainability expert, Thal and Roy, the Israeli guys who had finished their mandatory military service and were now doing the customary world travel, all of the main crew of Toyo, Mao, the Tiger, Noah, Ken, and Derek, the photographer from Illinois.. there was a crazy Pakistani man, a guy from Florida, who, when we were talking about crazy Florida people, told me a story about a guy who taught his parrot how to say, “I consent” so that he could have sex with it, and when I said that there was simply no possible way this way true, no matter how crazy Floridians are, (because let’s be real, it is anatomically impossible to have sex with a parrot), and he Googled it and said that ok, it was a fake story, but he believed it because that’s how crazy the Floridians are.. Man, so many characters.

There are many stories here. There was a mystery man. In the lobby, in the common room on the first floor, where we all hung out, there was a guitar. It was a piece of garbage. It was mostly broken, but it had strings. You could make some sounds, but you didn’t play that guitar. It was mostly for the comfort of guitar players, to have a guitar around, and to look at, even if it didn’t work. But one day, after I became a resident, and they moved me up to the 5th floor (and I remember asking if I could just stay in my 2nd floor room so that I didn’t have to “move all of my stuff” (insert crying laughing emoji)(because I had like two suitcases) I started checking out the upstairs, and found a nice roof, and a secret lounge that no one was using. Inside of this secret lounge, there was a guitar, that was nice and actually functional, and I adopted it. I never saw anyone in the lounge, after hanging out in there for some days, and I figured that this was just a left-behind guitar, and started keeping it in my room, and somehow, Aya chan, one of the Toyo staff, a wonderful gal, knew that I had the guitar. A few weeks later, she asked me if I had the guitar, and if I could leave it in the lounge, because the owner had been looking for it, and I said, “The owner???” She said he used to live there and still comes around sometimes to play in that room, and he was glad that someone was using the guitar, but still wanted to play it too. So I left it in the lounge, and wondered about this mysterious man. Not long after that, when I went up to the lounge to play, as I walked up the steps to that 6th floor, I heard something. I heard music, string music, but it wasn’t guitar. It was something else, something like a sitar, some Middle Eastern sound. I walked up to the door and listened, and what I could hear was absolutely blowing my mind. Whoever was playing whatever in that room was a complete genius of the instrument, and I knew that must be the mystery man. I stood there in awe, listening to this master, getting a private concert, and waited. I didn’t want to disrupt him, obviously, but I needed to know who he was, and so when he finally stopped playing, I opened the door, and there he was. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the mystery man, a Japanese man with long hair, playing his mystery instrument, made out of a gourd, with 20+ strings. (Google tells me it’s a kora, 21 strings.) I said, “Sugoi.” (Wow.) And then we became best friends. I apologized for taking his guitar, asked him about his instrument, he played some crazy stuff for me, told me all about the kora, asked me to play some guitar for him (which I was so embarrased about and have never felt more humbled) but he was encouraging and said I had a lot of feeling behind my playing. I felt like I was meeting a rare character, a magical being, like a unicorn, or Tom Bombadil from The Lord of Rings, something mysterious and ephemeral. I saw him outside of that room, once. He was a young man, but he had some problems with his legs, and walked with a cane. We met several more times, and played together, and talked about music, in that secret room, in a private space, outside of time, away from the noise and chaos of the world.

The ability to get away from the rest of the world, to have such a private, personal, untouchable space, both in that lounge, and in my room, was a truly amazing thing. And I had complete freedom at this time, with no one to answer to but myself. My time was entirely my own. Another rare, and powerful thing. But that’s a very precious thing, and you have to be careful with it. In the throes of winter, in this Toyo Hotel, I did for some time disappear into the void of League of Legends. It’s almost no different than if I had been sucked into an opium den. I disappeared from the lobby, I disappeared from the world, and I entered that magical, fictional world of the Rift. I hadn’t played in years, prior to this, I had nothing to do with the game. I was an addict. And I went back in. I had to relearn the game, a lot had changed. I had always been a jungler, a king of the jungle, killing monsters, surprising opponents, dictating the flow of the game, supporting the strongest members of my team, shutting down the enemy movements, controlling vision, territory, and objectives, and I gravitated to that role again, choosing as my character a new character, Kindred, Lamb and Wolf, a deadly archer with a spiritual wolf companion. I had to relearn the game, learn the new characters, learn this new character, her ins and outs, as she was a totally new concept, being a ranged hypercarry, but in the jungle – with no way to immobilize the enemy, easily killed, but a killer herself. Highly mobile, with an incentive to invade the enemy jungle, with the ability to mark targets for death, and hunt them down, growing stronger with each kill – she could fight early, she could fight well, if you knew how to handle her, and what fights to pick, but she couldn’t fight everybody. That didn’t come until later, when she had grown in power, and was completely unstoppable. She was conceptually entirely new, with a steep learning curve, and with massive potential for payoff, which made her fascinating to me, and that’s what I did. Day in and day out, for a week, for ten days, I hardly left my room, and mastered this killing machine. I will never forget one of the last games I played. Of course, I knew this was a problem, that I was playing League, that I was again disappearing into this void, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all. I was in. And in that last game, the final fight is burned into my mind. I had now mastered Kindred, I had perfected the killing machine, I played the entire game flawlessly, with no missteps, and in the end my total dominance from start to finish was complete, as I single-handedly cut down every member of the enemy team and ended the game, while my own team watched on. I decided that the game was over, and so it was. It was a flawless victory, my mastery was complete. After that, what do you do? Where do you go? Was I going to keep playing, to climb the endless ladder, rise to the top of the ranks, spending more precious time that I don’t have? I already didn’t have time for this. No. It was enough.

It was rare that I ever had anywhere specific I actually wanted to go, as I was mostly just hanging out, going to Tully’s, and enjoying the company of the other Toyo people. They gave me plenty of things to do, they all had their own itineraries, they were full of ideas, and I could join them if I wanted, or just let them go out and do the excursions, and get the report when they came back. It’s fun talking to other backpackers this way, because everyone goes out, and they do their things, and then you all come back to the hostel and talk about it, sharing stories, sharing ideas, inspiring each other. Sometimes, you find someone you really like, someone has an idea that you want to get in on, and you do it together. You can always find someone to go out to eat with you, if you want it, either in the common room, or going out somewhere. You are like a little family, for the time you’re together. I was happy to go along with others, and for that time I was something of a tour guide, because I was one of the few in the hotel who was actually a Japan resident, and spoke Japanese, and knew about all of the things that they were learning about for the first time, and so I could introduce them to new things, show them some of the more interesting aspects of the culture, and I became a little bit of a local expert, and could take them to places that tourists might not get into. Most casual tourists, probably very few came to Nishinari in Osaka at all, and so you got a different and more adventurous crowd, more world travelers, more experienced travelers, and people who wanted to experience deeper elements of Japanese culture. Well, on one excursion, that was wholly my project, I convinced some of the other Toyoans, that was photographer Derek, French beatmaker Jean, and the Scot, Ben (his name is not Ben but what the hell was his name), to join me on an expedition to the Tower of The Sun. I had been enamored with it since I discovered it in a pack of famous-Osaka-things cards that I got in a vending machine. I still have those cards, and what an incredible purchase. That pack had all of the Osaka gems, all of the local treasures, everything to do, everything to eat. In a pack of cards. And when I flipped through them and saw The Tower of The Sun, I had the feeling that I had seen it before, somewhere in Toyo, and I started walking around and checking the walls, which were all covered in art made by the guests and staff, until I found it. There on the wall in the main lobby was an image of the Tower of The Sun. And so I looked this thing up, and I knew I needed to go there. It was kind of far though, about thirty minutes or an hour away, and I didn’t want to go alone. I pitched this trip in the lobby, and Jean, Matthew, and Derek signed up for it, and so we planned to meet the next morning, not too early, just something like 9:30, and all go together. And at this time in my life, I had no phone, and one of the biggest inconveniences about not having a phone, and you wouldn’t expect this, is that you actually don’t have an alarm clock anymore. I usually wake up early, and so I was sure it wouldn’t be any problem, but for some reason that morning I slept in. I woke up at 9:45 or 10:00. The day of the big expedition! Shit!! I called my friends on the Line app, no response. I rushed down into the lobby, but I didn’t see them. I wavered on what to do, and decided that they must have just left without me, hoping to see me there. So, I grabbed my camera, and I made the trip myself. The Tower of the Sun is an enormous art installation from the 1970’s world art expo, that was held in Osaka. The outside is basically an enormous, 100-150 foot tall concrete and metal cone, with two arms, and with a giant hybrid sun/moon face, with a quirky sun face painted on the front, and a quirky moon face painted on the back of the main tower. It’s like an enormous, modern, Japanese totem pole, in reverence to the sun and the moon. (Then you get inside, and it’s totally not what you would expect, and I knew you could go inside, but had no idea what was in there). It’s amazing. And it’s part of a huge, many-square-miles-large park. I took the train there, walked to it, and looked all over – but my friends were nowhere to be found. I went inside and picked up the four tickets that I had pre-ordered, and wondered what to do. Could they have gone ahead? Were they already inside? Did they give up on the trip? Did I somehow get ahead of them? Should I wait? And these are the fun kinds of questions you have when you don’t have a phone. These are the fun little riddles you have to solve. Because obviously if I had a phone, I would know. They would have told me. But I didn’t, just like the olden days, and I had to wonder what happened. This best part of the story wouldn’t have existed if I had a phone, so when people ask me what it’s like to not have a phone, remember this story. I asked the girls working at the Tower’s reception if there were already three young male foreign men in the Tower, and they said no. I didn’t know what to do, and I waited around for some time, probably fifteen minutes, and walked around the park. I think I had a time set on my tickets, that I was supposed to use them within a certain timeframe, from 11am-12pm, so there was some time pressure. After waiting, and explaining my situation to the nice girls working the reception desk, I decided that I wasn’t going to be finding my friends, and I should just give the rest of my tickets away. I went back outside, and saw a couple with two young boys entering, and offered them my tickets, but they already had some. Same with another guy walking in. I walked up the entrance ramp, and went out into the park. Nearby, there were three young girls, high school aged. I tried them. As soon as I started talking to them, they were shy as hell, giggling and alert, as this is a very rare occurance, having a wild gaikokujin start speaking Japanese to you, and I offered them the tickets. They were very apologetic, and thought carefully about it, but they had somewhere they needed to be, and wouldn’t take them either. So after that, I just said, well, I tried, and I went back into the tower. I updated the reception girls, and told them after all that I couldn’t find anyone to give the tickets to, and was just gonna’ have to go in alone, and they were sad to hear it, but shouganai! It can’t be helped. And then, not a minute after I had gone in, and was looking over the initial design sketches for the construction of this magnificent tower, one of the reception girls came running over to me, saying excitedly, “Sumimasen! Sumimasen! Tomodachi ga kimashita!!” (“Hey, your friends are here!!”) And I ran out, and there they were! And I said, “What the heck!” And they were like, “We were in the lobby the whole time!” I couldn’t believe it. Somehow I had just missed them. And so we went in together, and had a great time. And it turned out, externally the Tower was all about the sun and moon, but inside, it was The Tower of Life, and the thing was filled with giant sculptures of paleolithic creatures, protozoans, early man, dinosaurs, jellyfish, spiraling up to modernity, from the ancient times. The entire interior glowed red, and there were spiny things everywhere, and there was a whole section at the beginning that was just crazy tribal masks. Then, afterwards we went to a nearby mall, and gorged on amazing udon. God, I love udon. And while we were loading up our udon with all of the goodies, Jean was standing next to me at the counter, pouring the fried crunchy crispies into his bowl, and this whole time we had been speaking English, and then he says something to me, and I was like, “Bro, was that French?” Because I couldn’t understand him at all, and he was like, “Was it? Oh, sorry, my brain is so tired.” He was so tired that he had just defaulted back to French.

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To be continued??????