Nara It rained for five days straight in Tokyo, and I decided to love it.
Rain changes the city. Umbrellas everywhere, clear plastic ones mostly, so a crowded crossing looks like a field of jellyfish moving all at once. Shops keep a little stand by the door for wet umbrellas, sometimes with long plastic sleeves so you don't drip on the floor. I think about those sleeves more than I should.
I walked a lot. Small streets behind big streets. A noodle counter with eight stools and a ticket machine by the door, where you choose your bowl by pressing a button and hand the ticket to the cook. A narrow shop that sold only pens. A vending machine glowing on a dark corner at one in the morning, selling hot tea in a can, which I held in both hands like a small heater all the way back.
from the same roll
Then the stamps. A lot of train stations there keep a rubber stamp and an ink pad out for travellers, each one a little drawing of something nearby: a bridge, a tower, a cartoon fish. You just press it into your notebook. Free. Nobody watches you. I found out on day two and became a slightly obsessed person.
On the last day I bought the cheapest ticket from the machine, the small stiff card kind, and rode one stop just to have it. At the exit I asked the man at the staffed gate if I could keep it. He stamped it so it couldn't be used again, handed it back with both hands and gave me a small nod, like this was a normal thing to want. Maybe it is.
the souvenir · kept
A train ticket and a crooked station stamp
The ticket is glued into my notebook, and next to it is my favourite stamp, which came out crooked. My hand slipped and the design ran off the edge of the page: half a roof, a corner of a cloud. I almost tried again. I didn't. Together they look the way the trip felt: a little rushed, very happy, slightly wet.
I shot the whole week on one roll. The camera's date stamp is still set to the wrong year, so every photo says '98 in orange in the corner. I've decided not to fix it. It's my favourite lie.
On the last night the rain stopped. The streets shone. Everyone closed their umbrellas at the same time, like a theatre curtain going up.
โตเกียว ฝนตกทั้งอาทิตย์ แต่ไม่เสียดายเลย
— nara