June 18th, 2004
108750681464594600
11/2/03
I’m sitting outside the Kawasaki station Tsutaya and taking a minute for my thoughts. People are moving everywhere (something I’m starting to get used to). Hundreds of beat up parked bicycles consume forty percent of the sidewalk, buses and cars manage a unique symbiosis with stop and go scooters, and the smell of roasted chestnuts is heavy from street vendors. I’m perched on a slanted rail at the edge of a wheelchair ramp into the store and the reassuring din of trains overhead is mixed with a increasingly annoying looping ad for The Matrix behind me.
It was my birthday on Thursday, I worked until midnight and came home to a cold dinner and poor Mikiko sleeping on the floor, but since then things have been pretty nice. My 1:30 meal was saved via the magic of the microwave oven and despite my best efforts I fell asleep in my work clothes until 7:30 Friday morning when my cell phone oh so diligently reminded me that it was time to get up for work (which it wasn’t since I had the day off). Like most of the recent sixty-hour plus work weeks I didn’t get out of the house until four or five in the afternoon (a bad habit), but managed some shopping in Akiba (picked up Wind Waker, Chu Chu Rocket, and a Famicom AV) with Mikiko before an evening out at an eight seat pub and watching Nausicaa before calling it a day.
Saturday we repeated the oh-so-easy bed weary sloth until motivated to get to the Yamaha shop in Shibuya before closing, and took the indispensable Yamanote line from Yoyogi once again. We visited a print club to have some wallet photos made as we were having good hair days, and then picked up my much longed for first step to electronic music composition (the Korg) and then had a superb Italian dinner. Returned home with said blessed piece of technology, played a rousing round of strip Atsumare! Made in Wario, and then high on latte’ and chocolate traversed reclothed yet again to Shibuya for a couple hours at Club Asia before bedding at four this morning. [What an indulgent lifestyle.]
