Japan
Bloody Lips and Bullet Trains: Why I Travel for Music
Tasting blood and covered in the sweat of those surrounding me, I delicately extracted myself from being stuck between the legs of my favourite singer. The crowd was pulling him…
Winter Eggs
We wake in a pile of butter-yellow blankets beside a dying fire: me and three dark heads of hair. The world outside is a snowglobe – a beautiful rarity in…
The Dream Factory: Dismantling My Disney Adulthood
It’s the most miserable day on earth, six degrees and pouring rain, and I am standing umbrella-less in an hours-long queue to get into Tokyo Disney. I had this ticket…
Untethered
I prepare for Tokyo by quitting vapes. One week until departure, and I’ve not bought a single item on my list. I’m a zombie, moving through life in a cloud…
傘おばけ / The Ghost of My Umbrellas
The night I lost umbrella number one, I tried stingray for the first time – ordered for me by my enthusiastic dining companions: a group of women who all work…
The Last Stop
The smell of rain does not rise from the grass to be ignored, but my disregard that morning as I set out left me a weeping fool, caught beneath a…
I Cockblocked a Kickboxer in Tokyo
3:32am I am barely five feet tall. He is a professional kickboxer, stocky and red, and a breath away from my face. His furious words land on me as spit…
The Unexpected Joy of Enforced Public Nudity
After a bad injury, when I booked my first ever sports massage, I was shocked at the level of intimacy. The experience was more intimate, in fact, than any romantic…
The Curious Case of the White Man’s Dick
My capsule hotel had bigger beds and cheaper rates than anything else in the area, but it didn’t have walls around its showers. So as I stood in the steam…
The Writer’s Routine
Six o’clock. Greeting her in the dim light, the mirror on the far wall can only fit a proportionate view of her features. It is small and inornate, but she…
Rush Hour Sucks Everywhere
In Tokyo, rush hour extends to 8pm. Not because of systemic inefficiency, but simply because lots of people work later than 6 o’clock. And I am one of those unlucky…
Failure to Launch
The legacy of one William Shakespeare specifically outlined the various separate qualities of a tragedy and a comedy: two stories destined never to interlink, telling tales of diverse passions, whether…