Traditionally, being a cat lady means living in a house that always smells of Fancy Feast tinned food and not owning a single piece of clothing devoid of faux fur. Deeper than that, it’s an insult reserved for unpartnered older women – whatever older means these days – to dismiss them for not fitting the…
“The one you are waiting for: will not come.” I read the fortune over and over. I am not superstitious. I am not waiting for anyone. And still, I’m crying on the shinkansen, clutching a ceramic fox in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other.
Kitsune – a fox. Omikuji – a…
Tasting blood and covered in the sweat of those surrounding me, I delicately extracted myself from being stuck between the legs of my favourite singer. The crowd was pulling him in as the hands of security tried to pull him out. All I was endeavouring to do was ensure that I placed my hands in…
We wake in a pile of butter-yellow blankets beside a dying fire: me and three dark heads of hair. The world outside is a snowglobe – a beautiful rarity in 逗子 / Zushi / the half-mile beach where the sun was born. In the morning light, there’s a smudge of blue on the inside…
I prepare for Tokyo by quitting vapes. One week until departure, and I’ve not bought a single item on my list. I’m a zombie, moving through life in a cloud of smoke. My share house from the last six months is ejecting me. I have nowhere to live. It’s a repeat of last January, when…
The smell of rain does not rise from the grass to be ignored, but my disregard that morning as I set out left me a weeping fool, caught beneath a dead lamppost as it poured.
Back home, I would have drawn the curtains back together and entertained the idea that it is okay to do nothing.…
A list of reasons why spending a month in Japan with Astray doing a writing and language workshop is an excellent idea.
3:32am
I am barely five feet tall. He is a professional kickboxer, stocky and red, and a breath away from my face. His furious words land on me as spit droplets. His finger wags, like he knows everything in the world, and I know nothing. He calls me a little girl.
“Don’t point at me,”…
While we’re all familiar with the hype around shark attacks in Australia, how many of us have ever heard about bear attacks in Japan? Conflict with these animals has been increasing over the last 10 years, with a whopping total of 156 attacks recorded in 2020. Crop damage has also cost 426.7 million yen ($5…
After a bad injury, when I booked my first ever sports massage, I was shocked at the level of intimacy. The experience was more intimate, in fact, than any romantic encounter I’d had up until that point in my life.
I’m British, you see, and we Brits tend to be a bit uptight. It's actually…
“No beatbox, no life.”
It’s a simple statement and I can’t help but laugh at the hyperbole, yet something about it rings poignant and true. The more I learn about Japan’s competitive beatbox scene, the more I realise the sense of purpose that a simple hobby can provide in a pandemic-stricken world where many…
My capsule hotel had bigger beds and cheaper rates than anything else in the area, but it didn’t have walls around its showers. So as I stood in the steam of the sento – the communal bath shared by guests – realising what the next week would have in store, I started to believe that…