Japan

“Flotsam

He showed me the diary he kept during the events. He showed me the yellowed newspaper clippings that made him briefly, obscurely famous. He told me his story. All the while I took notes. Nearly a year later, after considerable difficulties, I received a tape and a report from the Japanese Ministry of Transport. It was as I listened to that tape

community feeling is definitely an attractive idea. The sense of belonging, that ‘it’s okay to be here’, for example, which we possess as a fundamental desire.

Makiko was a hostess, but that can mean all kinds of different things. Some good, some not so good. Osaka is rife with drinking spots, but an address is enough to tell you what you should expect, in terms of clientele and atmosphere and hostesses. She worked in Shobashi, the neighborhood the three of us worked in for years after we ran off that

the Japanese company behind Hello Kitty. People don’t know Sanrio’s creative department invented over four hundred characters—all with unique looks and personalities and backstories—before they made Hello Kitty, which became a phenomenon.

It is surprisingly easy to forget what you have witnessed, the horrifying image or the voice speaking the unspeakable, in order to exist in the world we must and we do forget, we live in a state of I know but I do not know.