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Heading west on the south side of the Shakujii-gawa tonight, I was vaguely annoyed by the realization that nothing in particular caught my attention. I often turned my head like Seijun Suzuki's slow tracking shot around a rice cooker to stay attentive to various objects as I ran past them. Yet, my observations had no particular focus and constantly meandered from the indecisive angle of tree branches to the indeterminate feelings associated with the time between 16:00 JST and 17:00 JST. Nevertheless, while returning east on the north side, I was practically stopped in my tracks by a quick sequence of appearances. First, a spotless, yellow, eight-prong Lego brick was resting on its side in a patch of dark soil. It seemed as if the ground had been evenly raked, then the brick placed on top with such care that it left no impression and floated slightly above the ground. This sighting was followed immediately by a young boy bounding towards me in a green down vest, his left bloody nostril plugged with tissue paper. Evidently, his nose had been packed for some time, as the tissue had drawn blood out from deep inside his skull, almost to the remaining white tip. The last triangular iceberg of tissue would no doubt soon succumb to the flow in his mobile paper chromatography experiment.

Three paces later, three identical dogs emerged in rapid succession from a bush. They were impossibly small dogs in matching and impossibly small dog sweaters, their nails nervously tapping out an erratic Morse code like a bushel of crabs dumped on the pavement. The dog in triplicate instantly made me conscious that tonight, along the Shakujii-gawa, there were no cats. Simultaneous with thinking "no cats" from the end of the thought, "Tonight along the Shakujii-gawa, there are no cats," a cat promptly appeared on my left. The cat's head momentarily raised, ceased the meticulous cleaning of its ass, swiveled, and slowly tracked my passing; all the while, its left leg was sticking up in the air at a precise ninety-degree angle to the ground upon which it was sitting.

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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