Antiseptic Series of Blur

Tokyo is seeped with antiseptic charm, that's all I have to say. Cleanliness is an obsession, a literal way of saying "We have OCD in this country". Implanted fluorescent whites magnifies this asian metropolitan. In a way, it highlights the efficiency of rush hours in rushed hours; this nation becomes so culturally advanced we see tradition as new rituals. We barely touched the epidermis of the land, and this city shields its secrets well.

september 14th:

"the air is dampened, a turning point between summer and fall, a transition everyone is complaining about."

A week is barely enough time to find out what goes on behind secret corners of Harajuku or Shibuya, but enough to trigger a new found love for this city, although not entirely.

Tokyo is good for the hidden child. Disneyland, despite the long queues the rides pay back with forms of loopiness and parades almost every two hours (we were there for halloween celebration!). Peter Pan asked us where we're from and I told him we flew there;

"You flew on broomsticks?! Are you guys witches? Like... like, Harry Potty?"

He looked stunningly like Zac Efron and had quite an elfish grin.

I confess my love for Alice in Wonderland and all its character just because Alice is not one of the disney princesses and there is so much about that story than just an afternoon daydream -- an ultimate existentialist experience. When Alice goes into wonderland, it becomes her puzzle but it's also her need to find meaning in bread-and-butterflies, purple cheshire cat and a hookah smoking caterpillar. A questioning of identity is so unlike Cinderella or what Belle can do and there's just something of the possibility of the impossible that attracts me so much.

I loved the tea cups! And mad mad spinning around and round.... ... Who are you?

One night we stayed up till 2 in the morning just watching the the buildings light up in subliminal red dots and hoped it wasn't some sort of code red emergency. The shutter was being naughty and everything turned out blur or just dark.

I developed a love/hate relationship with the bullet train because we missed one of them and everyone was dead hungry and thank god I didn't have to eat McDonald's like everyone did but there's something strangely calming about those rapid rides and smoky cabins, the turnaround chairs and acting all benevolent. For a while on those train rides, it felt liberating and responsible, like it was the right thing to do. The scenery are a series of blur because we travel so fast in them whooosh whoosh while our ears were constantly blocked by pressure.

But I also love the morning JKR trains because it reminds me of the KL sentral trains after work but everyone seemed so surprised at it. We played games in the train to see who could stand on two feet the longest without stumbling down on the way to Harajuku and back. I discovered things that reminded me of the place I'm going back to next week, they're so dissimilar they almost seem identical because comparison makes me confused.

I wrote wishes on a wooden board

"I wish for all the happiness and love and health of the world; to the people I know and strangers I have yet to meet. I am thankful for the places I have been and people I have met. I wish for selfless love and dedication in everyone. - 22th september"

For a while I didn't know what I wanted to say or write or even gather my thoughts and oddly enough while I stood there with a marker, it felt like such a memorably cathartic moment because who knows if one day you or you and him or her would come and and read what I wrote and feel blessed? It was like postsecret in real life, and there were ones that made me sad and some hopeful and some self sacrificing but it all made sense then. I wasn't mad or angry and that was a good feeling.

I love the walking the food (not the one where I didn't get my order though) the streets the momentum and one night, I walked one round on our hotel floor and it made me so happy!

The morning we left, we wrote a note to the housekeeping lady (if it was a she) and said: thank you for cleaning up our room! and stuck ribbons onto it. Maybe she thought it was trash and threw it but I suppose we'll never find out.