Encapsulating what a camera lens can't capture - Maybe that's what writing is for.


   The feeling when you stumble upon an overnight run-down okonomiyaki shack, where the stern-faced chef offers a genuine smile while handing you an extra lime, impersonating you into a local weary salaryman stopping by after a long, tiring day.
 Maybe that’s what writing is for.


   Then there's the sensory assault when your taste buds collide with the hot, mysterious caramelized sauce on a teppanyaki griddle, while an early autumn breeze gently tickling the back of your neck. Maybe that’s what writing is for.


   And a moment, frustrating one, like slaving away for hours on the Shinkansen, crafting works, only to have a client devoid of sense or taste shred them to pieces. In moments like these that the universe whispers, ‘bad days are inevitable, but so is the solace of a good meal’ 
is what writing is for.


   Maybe this is just me, sake-infused and scribbling away post dinner. Far from the elegant prose of Murakami’s words or the culinary narratives spun by the likes of Anthony Bourdain. Yet, if it can transmit the raw, unfiltered essence of these experiences, then maybe that's what writing is for.

   And that state of pure orgasm from a long drag of an after-meal Lucky Strike and one extra Asahi Dry following a scrumptious meal?
That's definitely what writing is for.

   I couldn’t remember precisely but in the novel, there is a scene where a man drinks moonshine while grilling ham and says this to his friend, "It would be hard to get through each day if those who treasure solitude don't know how to harvest a pleasure from simplicity.”
   My eyes caught the time on a clock, 18:36. When the phrase tugged at my consciousness, the world was already turning its lights off, inch by inch. I sat in a bar – a little joint I just discovered online and couldn't even pronounce its name, a chicken oyster skewer, a spicy cabbage and pork skewer, a wagyu rib BBQ, and a bottle of Hoegardenn were on my table. Earlier, I was at a different kind of bar, one that served coffee – a small, cozy place where you’d get lost in the noise and the scents, and the barista who knows her beans.
   It was hummed with the symphony of clinking cups and coffee beans in grinding, a kind of place where people really come to explore taste notes, discuss sensory things, and mingle. I sat there, watching a barista serve me Geisha beans two ways – one simple cold black, and another that was a ristretto - all the while filling the air with random voices, words, sentences, stories, feelings, and lives. All in a language I couldn’t follow.
   The place was just around 7x7sqm, a bit cramped, but strangely, I felt disjointed to those noisy sounds and that crowded space. It was just me, stranded on my own island. The Giesha was decently sweet without sugar, carrying a note of mandarin orange that danced on my tongue. I wish I could give those compliments to the barista, a Chinese short-haired lady in a blue sweater, and maybe ask her about her favorite cafe in Shanghai or tell her about Substance, an omakase-style cafe in Paris where this cafe reminded me of, but how can I when we were living in a whole different linguistic world.
   Sometimes, or most of the time if I'm being drunkenly honest with you as my friend - I find myself wondering, how can I feel so overwhelmed and completely hollow at the same time? How can a feeling of too much nothingness exist? In a crowded metropolis that cradles 28 million souls, how can one still feel completely disconnected? A few years ago, a lady told me “I feel like there is only a void inside you”, but if it’s true, how can the void felt so burdensome?
   I was more than halfway to my dinner at the time I was writing this paragraph. The restaurant buzzed with the muted dialogues of a film projected against the far wall. An almost empty restaurant makes the film even more prominent, but no one seems to care its presence. A new entrant caught my eye — a solitary woman with a headphone on, sitting and putting a fat old book with a faded blue cover down to the table across mine. “Excuse me, do you speak English? I’m just curious; what’s that book about?", I said with a smile. That was what I was thinking. I had Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kanakami in my tote bag and a non-reader wouldn't make it a first action to put a book on the table the moment they sit down at a restaurant. We were both alone. She was probably in her 30s. I’m going to turn 26. Not that much different. We could possibly be a good friend, or at least had a nice conversation through the meal.
   The waiter’s question pulled me back to the reality. I declined to another bottle of beer and as my response dissolved into the air, I finally noticed the subject of the film, it’s about Charlie Chaplin. He delivered, I assumed, a crucial line in the film: “Despite all the fantasies we have, people don’t care about the things we didn’t do.” Funny enough, even a film about comedy star still gave me such a melancholy line.
   The woman was hugging a friend who’d just walked in. She wasn’t alone anymore. They hugged, and said something like, “How was your day?” or “Haven’t seen you for a while. How is life going?”. And there I sat, looking an empty bottle of Hoegardeen and at the last piece of chicken on the skewer. I should just finish it and head home.
   Taking a breezy ride through streets adorned with Sycamore trees, returning to an oversized apartment that is too big for someone to live alone, dipping into the universe of an unfinished novel. After all, It’s not a bad night for a life that solitude brings, a life that I have seemingly chosen or that has chosen me.