Takayama
September 5, 2023
I remember setting trash on fire outside of Yakata Yahei. I don’t know whether the sound of crackling flame or the smell of cigarette smoke more vividly evokes childhood memories of summer trips to Japan. My grandmother didn’t smoke, but the woman who assisted her at the ryokan did. It was always unclear to me what her relation to our family was, but she was always there during those busy summers. I had never heard a voice so raspy before meeting her. I remember learning about the rituals in front of the family altar in the back tatami mat room where I used to play video games and once attended a Buddhist wedding in a clip-on tie. Walking by an incense shop will take me back to those delicate moments with my grandmother as I picture the candles waving goodbye. At Yakata Yahei, my grandmother showed me how to cut bamboo shoots that appeared to grow out of the ashes from the piles of trash, and we prepared and ate them together. At the end of those meals, I purposely left rice in my bowl so that I could feed the koi. It was my favorite activity.
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August 22, 2020
My favorite video game growing up was a PlayStation game called Monster Rancher. There were many sleepless sleepovers in my childhood where we would spend hours unlocking monsters and exploring new dimensions of the game.
The monster breeds were memorable. The most iconic was the one-eyed yellow monster Suezo who had an indelibly mischievous laugh. There were also familiar breeds like Plant, Hare, and Tiger. But others like Gali, a mystical magic-carpet sun god, and Monol, a monster who could be characterized as a flexible block of charcoal, were so imaginative I wish I lived in that world. Also adapted into a TV series, Monster Rancher was the first in a series of at least four games that I played, and in the later installments, they introduced new breeds like Mocchi, a pink monster with the likeness of the Japanese treat, and Color Pandora, the cutest thing.
The premise of Monster Rancher was straightforward. You trained monsters and battled against others in contests to increase your monsters’ rankings and win prizes. The game admittedly grew repetitive after raising a few monsters to the highest ranking, but what kept it entertaining past sunrise were the mechanics to generate monsters.
Fellowship of the Emoji Ring
May 2, 2019
The first thing you need to know about Maya is that she doesn’t like dogs.
The second thing is that she doesn’t like sports. The guy can play a sport. A soccer player is sexy. But a man who spends a Sunday afternoon wearing a shirt with another man’s name on his back and worshipping that namesake like a religious figure is unattractive. For the record, it’s not unattractive to me, but right now her tastes are the ones we need to enumerate.
She won’t surrender her feelings about dogs and sports quickly. In fact, she might not say anything at all. Maya isn’t shy or passive, nor does she skirt the truth to appease someone. But it’s just not in her nature to voice these opinions so directly, especially before getting to know a person, before carefully assessing how they might react. Nevertheless, right here right now, her feelings about dogs and sports are front and center. It might be the veil of a smartphone, or the fact that a surrogate is the one presenting you this information. But online dating has made defining such deal breakers so easy and outwardly expressing them so normal.
According to the data I collected by sifting through hundreds of Hinge profiles and by fielding many puns, the majority of straight men 5’10” and taller between the ages of 28 and 37 within 5 miles of Brooklyn who identify as any of the race options available will have a photo of themselves with a dog or wearing another man’s jersey somewhere on their profile.
Deep Valleys Make High Mountains
September 5, 2018
What about suki kirai? Is there a word for that in English? It literally means “like dislike”—or maybe “love hate.” The phrase refers to someone who has a lot of preferences, and I usually ascribe this trait to food. People who have suki kirai are picky eaters.
I shouldn’t have suki kirai, my mom taught me that.
It usually happened like this. I would be sitting on the floor of our study, probably playing Diablo II, and my mom would call out from the kitchen that dinner was ready. I was sitting on the floor because I moved my desktop computer to a low table. Not Indian style, but I was into seiza, which literally means “proper sitting,” or kneeling butt-to-heels like they do in tea ceremonies. I had this setup throughout middle school, and it may or may not be the reason that in my adulthood my knees don’t touch and I feel the need to get cupping therapy to fix my back. If I didn’t instinctively yell back “Chotto matte!” (“Wait a little!”), I would hop downstairs to the dinner table.
The Man Who Holds Trash
January 4, 2018
“I follow Bernese mountain dogs on Instagram!” I approached a man and tugged on Jayden’s leash gesturing, Is your dog friendly? My black lab made his usual nose-to-butt introduction.
The owner smiled and responded, “My dog is on Instagram.”
I smiled back.
A beat.
“Do you post things in the first person as if your dog is talking?”
He laughed embarrassingly and also realized that I was being serious. “Well, my girlfriend does, yes.”
Jayden nudged to explore a nearby tree, and I could tell the man was eyeing the countdown timer for the crosswalk. Furthermore, I didn’t know what else to say after that. “OK, well, have a nice day!”