130

Laundry clips fade into darkness as the sun sets and the Yuyake Koyake plays.

121

120

If flying from Cairo to Beirut yields shimmering red and green hexagonal light refractions in photographs, and if flying from Cairo to Tokyo yields arcing red, green, and blue color flares on in-flight television, then what kind of light and what kind of shape would a flight from Beirut to Tokyo generate? Would it be red and blue, or blue and green? Would the colors present as undulating waves, crisp, rotating pentagrams, or would they take the more radical form of the Japanese Red Army being extradited from Lebanon?

118

The "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" appears suddenly on in-flight television as my plane hits turbulence approaching Japan and forms a perfect blend of the possibility of a mechanical disaster in the present with the environmentally progressive technology from the 1985 comedy Back to the Future. It looks so bright and warm on that suburban front lawn – a round, soft afternoon light – whereas it is 18% gun metal gray and getting cold along the Shakujii gawa. The foliage, of course, is also very different. What then might be the role of the blue down vest worn by the film's protagonist in altering the course of the upcoming past, or previous future? Protective insulation would no doubt be of use in navigating through time without contaminating one's own existence with flak from a deviant tangent. As well, that Mr. Fusion was based on a Krupp coffee grinder raises some interesting connections with the past – with the German company's study of barbed wire in the war between Russia and Japan. Would the stainless steel of the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car upon which Mr. Fusion is mounted shine in the trenches of Manchuria as it does in the Californian light? Would it have been more appropriate to call the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor Mr. Mikasa after the Krupp armor and guns on the Japanese battleship of the same name? The pivot point of the gun barrel certainly does have a striking relationship to Mr. Fusion's logo. But above all, what is the relationship on my TV screen between the cutaway of the down vest's missing right arm and the tinted arc of the home energy reactor facing it? The tinting must be significant, though I am uncertain why.

Top image: Film still of the "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" from Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 film Back to the Future. Bottom image: Krupp gun on the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Mikasa battleship

97

After visually consuming delicacy after delicacy in the paper museum in Asakuyama Park I emerged into the middle of a group of kids roughly playing. One faked an eye injury, wailing in agony, then attacked when the others came over to see if he was OK. The late afternoon light illuminated the imaginary eyeball perfectly as it rolled on the ground, its stringy nerve and tissue collecting dirt and twigs. The wounded boy grabbed a piece of paper drifting by, crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into the gruesome socket to stanch the gushing of imaginary blood.

71

The Takinogawa laundry clips align with the afternoon sun so well. The three-color composite film of laundry in Higashi-Nippori from 2005 never really aligned correctly. Filming drying laundry three consecutive times with black and white film shot through a red filter, then a green filter, then a blue filter inevitably encounters the issues of wind and improper registration between the plates when superimposed to make a rudimentary color film. The irony is not lost on me that an almost impossible task utilizes the most mundane of acts as its focal point. I can understand why this experiment was a filmic failure, but I still don't understand why the successful conclusion of the laundry process here in Tokyo results in slightly metallic smelling clothes.

62

Heading west along the Shakujii gawa into the setting sun, suddenly the smell of flour, water, salt, oil and boric acid, or otherwise known as Play Doh.

59

Early yesterday morning there was the tiniest glint of sunlight on the black plastic of the rice cooker as I circled around it. Last night there was a smiling, waning crescent moon set against a dark sky and the soft purple glow of the bug lamps along the running path. Today the kitchen soap bottle is refracting long green streaks across the countertop. Tomorrow when the moldy zombies emerge from the hospital next door there will also be red and green. The sequence is as follows: yellow, black, white, black, purple, black, green, white, red, green; yet the implications are inscrutable.

46

The autumn light at 17:00 JST on the kitchen counter can even transform one hundred Japanese Yen ($1.12 USD) dish soap into the obelisk from Kubrick's 2001, or into filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu's grave marker in Kita-Kamakura, or into what seems like an image from an advertisement in which the tones have been inverted are are waiting to be considered.

28

I am sitting at the kitchen counter watching the 14:30 JST afternoon light illuminate my beer and pondering how each weekend in Vienna Harry Lime and Holly Martins are resurrected when the film The Third Man screens. Orson Wells (Harry Lime) and Joseph Cotten (Holly Martins) both previously starred in Citizen Kane where they played close friends. Watching The Third Man one can't help but sense their friendship leaking out from Citizen Kane and into The Third Man. I decided to screen the two films consecutively and marveled at the extraordinary saga of a tumultuous and shifting friendship with characters that argue, age, die, reappear, are thought to be dead, then reappear again and argue before finally dying. I specifically chose an icy cold Ebisu beer rather than my usual Sapporo to commemorate the occasion. The long yellow streaks of late afternoon light across the white counter top and intensified through my glass of beer serve as a lovely tribute to the strange longevity and richness of their friendship.

22

In the mornings I make my espresso with the iconic Italian stove top Bialetti Industrie Moka Express. At 4:55 JST I open the carefully constructed individual serving package and make my afternoon “Blendy” drip coffee. I drink. At 4:59 JST I set my cup down in a particular spot on the kitchen counter. I wait. At 5:00 JST the afternoon light comes through the cup perfectly and the "poignant 5 PM song" plays outside from nearby speakers. たいふうはどこですか？(taifu wa doko desuka – where is the typhoon?).