Japan

Asides and questions from commenters send me scurrying in delightful directions in search of new artefacts. I’m not sure that I’m ready, for example, for this jelly, music for older listeners from when I was a young listener. What a treat: sleek and cool and stripped of every trace of archness. Duran Duran never had it so good.

The timing—both band and place—couldn’t be more apposite, really, given the extent to which Japan’s been on my mind of late. I have rustled up the airfare and could make the money for a rail pass in time for the southern spring during which I’d hoped to return, but I’ve decided instead not to go back at the moment. My navigatory circle has shrunk to the home front and at the moment I want to read and reflect, not voyage. To go to cities new, now, would mean having similar experiences to those on my last journey, but in different places. I want there to be some change in me before I set off again: more language, more ability to read and recognise kana, something in myself that will mean the triad of person, time and place gets differently activated. There’s the material consideration, too, by which that money could also be spent on paying dog stud fees, or that zenith of suburban life, home improvement.

There’s the fact, as well, that I don’t really want to have adventures by myself at the moment. I want to have them with the good señor, and at present there are plenty of things to do at home. What does it feel like to be at present without wanderlust? It feels … limpid. It is a happy torpor.

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