Traditionally, being a cat lady means living in a house that always smells of Fancy Feast tinned food and not owning a single piece of clothing devoid of faux fur. Deeper than that, it’s an insult reserved for unpartnered older women – whatever older means these days – to dismiss them for not fitting the…
“The one you are waiting for: will not come.” I read the fortune over and over. I am not superstitious. I am not waiting for anyone. And still, I’m crying on the shinkansen, clutching a ceramic fox in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. Kitsune – a fox. Omikuji – a fortune.
…
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 in as the hands of security tried to pull him out. All I was endeavouring to do was ensure that I placed my hands in…
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 逗子 / Zushi / the half-mile beach where the sun was born. In the morning light, there’s a smudge of blue on the inside…
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 booked before I had a plane ticket home. This was the top of my itinerary, the one thing I needed to do before anything else.…
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 of smoke. My share house from the last six months is ejecting me. I have nowhere to live. It’s a repeat of last January, when…
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 dead lamppost as it poured.
Back home, I would have drawn the curtains back together and entertained the idea that it is okay to do nothing.…
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 droplets. His finger wags, like he knows everything in the world, and I know nothing. He calls me a little girl.
“Don’t point at me,”…
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 encounter I’d had up until that point in my life.
I’m British, you see, and we Brits tend to be a bit uptight. It's actually…
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 of the sento – the communal bath shared by guests – realising what the next week would have in store, I started to believe that…
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 can see a pair of eyes and ears, a nose and lips. She is a writer, but nobody the likes of Virginia Woolf stares back…
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 folk.
When I was back home in Perth -- behind my steering wheel in bumper-to-bumper traffic, dreaming of life in Tokyo and cursing…