image:
“The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
Akihabara was the place for me. I took it on building by building. If there was a sign and a staircase in the Chuo-dori1 area, I explored it.
It was my last night there, and the district’s energy was fading as people walked towards the station. I remember warmth and neon. Fluorescence. A softbox for my soul.
My ear buds pulsed with “Pete Standing Alone” [1] as I walked south towards the corner that would take me to the station. All the blasting store announcements, solicitations, j-pop music and melodramatic voice acting were muted or simply missing from the atmosphere by this hour. I turned my music down just enough to hear the shuffle as passers-by speed-walked around me.
As I reached the end of the street, I turned the corner and stopped listening to my song. Feeling the need to absorb one more visual, I paused a few yards from the Sato Musen building and turned around. I pulled out my five-month-old digital camera, held her steady and snapped without the flash. It felt like I was saying farewell to a close friend. I sighed a “thank you” into thin air. 
location information
- Name: the street facing Sato Musen in Akihabara's Denkigai (Electric Town)
- Address: 1-11-11 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo
- Time of story: evening
- Latitude: 35.698179
- Longitude: 139.771902
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
Write for Us!
We’re looking for short narratives describing pivotal moments of elation, confusion, absurdity, love or grief — or anything in between — inseparably tied to a specific place in Tokyo or New York.
commentary