Got in January 4th after leaving January 3rd. Always strange how it isn’t generally a given that long flying is a kind of fear, a closure, a brief reminder, as you leave all you have behind, that it’s not far off disappearing. More than stress it seems to me a little death peep.
My bodyclock is switched, I’ve stayed up, so I’m out before 5am. I watch the sun rise over Ueno park. I walk from Nezu through Uneo to Tsukiji fish market, as I see it on the map. I have done so much research before this trip, the first long haul away since the lockdowns for me. I have unlimited sim, and can audio message and phone, it keeps me one foot in home. I walk through Chiyoda and around the Imperial palace, around the moat, past the British embassy. The fish market is touristy, and I walk on towards Shibuya. These are long city distances but normal for me. I have the sensation of being pushed and then being left alone. I like it a lot. I am in my own small world. Everything is new and exciting, but also I’m not overawed, there is servility everywhere. I accidentally walk to the Tokyo tower, and up through Roppongi, and cross the grave of Hachiko the dog, and into the Shibuya crossing, and then up to Harajuku. I see Colin, my collaborative poet partner here, Herd for dinner in a chain restaurant.
Another day follows up at dawn, again in Ueno park. It’s still dark when I come across the temple. I’ve not done any research on things, on places, just on how the systems work. So I have never heard of this place, or any of these places, really, so I can stumble on them. A monk is asleep in a shop window? He wakes up and buy some pouches from him. I walk to Asakasa, see another temple, talk to anyone who’ll talk back. Go to Ueno zoo, won’t queue for pandas. For some reason my right eye leaks and I can’t close it without feeling something inside it. Again dinner with Colin. The amount of salt in the food makes my face red.
Saturday January 7th, the day of the first event, the Tokyo Camarade, twenty poets. I walk the Kanda river to Ikebukuro as the sun comes up, again. Colin and I train muay thai on pads in a park. I kick Colin’s elbow and my shin swells up to match my eye. It seems to suit Tokyo, and balance my body and its clock. We head out to kitasenjyu, to the venue, BUOY. It was an onsen for the 1960’s Olympics, then disused for decades, now resurrected into an avant garde theatre. I see Lola Nieto and Silje Ree, two European friends who happen to be living in Japan at this very time. I see Yasehiro Yatsumoto, unexpectedly – he has been invited Pero Fukuda without me knowing. I saw him last at a festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, years ago. It’s a small world. The event is packed, in a basement, haunted, with over 100 in the audience and ten performances. Pero and I first. Improvised spiritual health. I dance over the onsen and Pero gives me reiki. We open up the fun in the event, allow people to push a bit, mess. Lola and Yasehiro are incredible. Many are. It’s an epic three hours. Colin and I try to walk back to our flats, it’s over eight miles, at night.
Sunday January 8th, I am walking myself into the floor with my big leg and fat eye. We then take the bullet train to Kyoto, all four of us poet curators, Pero, Colin myself and Kyoko Yoshida. Kyoko and Pero live in Kyoto. Getting in, I’m staying in an Airbnb in a Reiki school, so I book a session, not really knowing what it is. Colin and I walk the market, have such grand fun, but again, we are both removed and alien and happy and common and unusual and unremarkable. So much is barriered because the visitors tap at Japanese culture? Because cult culture is not cult here? Because people are private. I notice what London is. Kyoto is so vivid.
Monday 9th, dawn this time climbing the hills around Kyoto, up to the head of Mount Inari, through hundreds of red gates. Drink from the fountain of while it’s still murky dark. All walk. Our Kyoto event, at the temple! Unbelievable. It’s like night time to me. Izumi Ukai is our host, a buddhist monk who later spits fire. Everyone is so supportive and kind. I hide behind the temple before the events begins so I can emerge my collaboration with Kyoko. I do so, and I am a tengu, a mountain goblin spirit. The event is one of the best I have ever done. Mad amounts of mad, and so much in each, and in a temple. We have a big feed afterward, again in the temple.
The following days in Kyoko, I do reiki, I climb a mountain and see some monkeys, I walk the bamboo forest, I drop my wallet and find it an hour later, I do my best to see all I can see and walk everywhere, and I have done this so much, it’s starting to invert me a touch. Colin and I return to Tokyo and he’s going but I’m staying for one last gig. We do Muay Thai together, a few times, in the hotel. We go and watch sumo! I see the dawn come up so bright over a breakfast buffet. We both are disturbed by akihabara. It isn’t the same after Colin goes.
Last days are more alone, and that is okay. I meet my friend Benedict Taylor’s friends Miya and Yoshi Hogyaku and I can’t believe how hospitable they are, cooking for me and showing me around small things and giant buddhas. I explore shinjuku and shibuya having moved to my seventh accommodation. I like it less than Ueno, especially the bits I’m supposed to see. I’m getting a bit inevitably ill.
The final gig is in a metro hotel and very corporate and it’s a bit confused whether I’m welcome. But it works out so so well, and thanks to Corey Wakeling, an ex pat local poet who goes far out of his way, and Silje Ree, a friend from London who has just moved, and Miya and Yoshi again, who work with me, and we flute and walk into a lobby while performing. It ends really high, really one of the highest.
I have time after this but I am alone and so careful and prepared but I can’t believe nothing has gone wrong and it’ll take me time to process how good.
