Japanese nouns

Bamboo. The new United Bamboo store, designed by Vito Acconci, in Daikanyama. Nice to see they're selling T shirts by my friend Hiroshi Sunairi. The headphones hanging at the end of the racks don't seem to work. CDs by Black Dice and others on the United Bamboo record label. A group photo of 'friends of United Bamboo'. It's very 'us', the atmosphere in here. And I find that almost disturbing, despite being almost 'us' (and certainly a friend of United Bamboo).

Clouds. At Ebisu Yoyo doesn't seem to work anymore at Poetry of Sex. They have Florence's T shirts, though. It's very 'us'. There's a photo of me and Shizu in the Ryan McGinley book on the table. Hello Shizu, it's a shock to see your face again! We used to be 'us'.

Bronze. Up at Ebisu Gardens Place men in yellow crash hats are rolling a vast fat bronze lady statue to a truck. Their seriousness is as vast as the lady's flanks, buttocks and boobs. It's an irresistibly funny combination.



Scout. I'm being a magazine scout, cos I'm supposed to be showing the publisher of Vice around Tokyo in a couple of days and I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about. 3www is a new Tokyo listings magazine, I discover. Also, french magazine Technikart now has a Japanese edition. And Purple has an English edition.

Garden. There's a show of garden art at the Watarium. You lie on some massage beds and gaze up at exotic artificial vegetation hanging from the ceiling. It's exciting, because all the other visitors are 'immaculates' -- the sort of girls who seem, professionally, to exist just to drift from one art gallery to the next, to add beauty and seriousness to the exhibits.

Buddha. With some time to kill before an appointment, and feeling jet-laggy, I go to another garden, the Nezu Museum with its hidden, walled green valley up past Prada and Comme. It seems to be closed, but nobody stops me going in. It's lovely here, a secret spot of dense trees, carp ponds, fragrant paths. The city seems far away and tranquility rules. Semis whirr at 100 decibels, spiders lurk, crows caw, caustic. I snooze on the teahouse stoop. When I wake I look up at the clouds and ask myself if, intuitively, I really feel there's a Christian god behind them. Of course I don't. And because the sky over Japan is godless, every little thing is able to have god in it -- that semi crawling the iron hoop in front of me, for instance, which has slept underground for seventeen years, and will sing and mate now for five weeks and die. Or the armoured slater in the photo at...

Office. Drinking beer at my favourite bar, which hangs over the Aoyama Dori. I'm with a photographer and we're looking at Rinko Kawauchi photos. One is of an Afghan kid's boot, with a bug crawling up it, tolerated. It seems very Buddhist, very Japanese, that photo, as a take on war. The Office waitress is stunning, tall and beautiful. There are only two other customers. She flirts with me, telling me how much she likes my eyepatch and straw hat. It's odd to be in this country where I find almost everyone so attractive. I'm so used to finding fault with people, but here I'm just agog with admiration. I want to marry everyone.

Music. At five o'clock each district of Tokyo broadcasts a piece of music from schools and government buildings to tell people it's time to go home. This music is often hauntingly beautiful and tender. Here's the Five O'Clock Music I heard today in the Nezu Museum gardens.

Five O'Clock Music (WAV file)

Radiance. The radiance of faces on a Friday night in Shibuya. Ghosts, shades of the Floating World, and this sense of safeness and happiness and togetherness that floods Japan. Sometimes when I'm here I really feel I've been spirited away, and what I'm seeing is some kind of beyondworld. Enchantment, over and over. I'd rather be here with my dear dead, my ghosts, if that's what they are, than anywhere.

Ghosts. Coming home through the dark, intricate, humid, gentle streets of Okusawa (right at the 24 hour supermarket with its excellent, mysterious food and hovering fluorescence, left past the temple with its spooky stone guardian) I really believe in ghosts. All my Japanese friends believe in them too, without question. The ghosts are friendly here.