The coldest run
A sea of running figures poured around the curve, while a small crowd cheered them on from the sidewalk. Eric ran through the turn and looked behind the crowd. He wore a blue technical outer layer, its zipper gone, its logo faded into a few flecks of white, and its collar worn down. On his chest a waxy piece of paper reading “Shinjuku city half marathon” and the number 3452 was pinned on. On his head a faded grey skullcap sat while his breath steamed around it. “There is a park just a few blocks behind there. It won’t have any lines because no one else lives on the race route like me and knows about it!” His eyes moved to stocky men with vaguely law enforcement style uniforms standing along the road ahead, scanning the crowd, and he continued running. “I'll just hold it, It would be a dumb to get kicked out for using the bathroom off course, and I’ll lose time”. Eric looked down at a thin watch on his wrist “9:10am, 6:15 minute per kilometer pace, doing great, no problem to finish.”. He continued down the hill and slipped smoothly into a pod of six runners with a similar pace, their bodies moving together through the city.
In front of Eric two Japanese women, dressed identically in white running shirts with pink Nike logos on the back, along with black shorts on top of black leggings, ran side by side. Eric noted their pony tails bouncing in unison, one’s stride holding back slightly and the other one breathing hard, but both slowly losing ground to the pack. A memory came to him of the two chatting with each other at the back of the start line, where he had put himself to avoid the inevitable crush of runners off the start line. Back on the run, the street inclined noticeably upwards. “Eeeeeeee another hill!, I’m already dead Saki-san, how are we going to make it back before the they close the race?” said the smaller one. “For sure, me too Sakura-chan. How far have we run? Are we close? Its so cold!” “Right?!”. Both women fell silent as they slogged on, their shoulders falling and their hands beginning to flop slightly.
From Eric’s right a tall older Japanese man, thin with leather like skin, moved casually towards the women. He wore short white see through, and a thin white sleeveless running shirt with “Honolulu Marathon” and a sunset printed on it, around which his wiry frame was visible. His stride was long and confident, his breathing light. The man held up an arm with a large digital watch on it towards the women. “Dont worry, I started my race timer at the starting gun, as I always do, our pace is a solid 6:40 per Kilometer. You are going to make it! Keep trying hard”. “Reeaaaly!?! Thank you! We are so tired. Who knew Shinjuku had so many hills?” “Yes. Definitely you are fine, we are nearing over 60% done, keep going just like you are ladies!”
As the pack hit the hill, Eric’s pace, like a train out of his control, moved him ahead and lost the chatting strangers. He knew these streets and these hills, had run them alone, in the heat, and in the cold over the last year. The river of runners, stretching from the national stadium, through East Shinjku, down Ichigaya river, up Kagurazaka, and back again moved steadily, continuing through a background of grey office buildings, deserted streets, tunnels without cars, traffic signs, and conbi towards the stadium at the finish line.
Eric looked ahead in surprise, one last check stood in front of him. A plastic strip over the road, a large clock measuring his race time against the 11:00am cut off. One last boss before he could enter the stadium and deliver the finish he'd worked towards over the past 7 months. The clock read 10:57. Below the clock race officials milled, checking their watches, rocking on their feet, and picking up orange cones, getting ready to close off the road to runners who came in too late. “What? Another one? How can my pace be fine but my time be this late? I've been running faster than I needed to this whole time!” Eric shook his head, his left calf aching, his feet numb with cold and pumped his feet just a little harder, the speed gain barely visible, up towards the final turn. Off the road past the check, the brown stadium track, blue finishing banner and green grass were visible on the other side of a garage-like entrance into the stadium as Eric ran in. “Barely made it. But those poor ladies, there is no way they got even close! That guy was dead wrong. Must have been crushed” and chuckled.
Igarashi’s desk
Igarashi’s desk stands defiantly in the middle of the office. Right there between the badge-in door to the coveted floor to ceiling window seats, with their sit stand desks and privacy from prying eyes. Igarashi’s desk faces directly at department head Tanaka's open windowed central office. Most days for the last two years, when Tanaka looks up longingly towards the north window, up the Meguro river towards home, Igarashi’s hunched form, wearing what he knows is a gym hoodie and running shoes, is just visible above the partition, blocking his gaze. But today, Igarashi’s desk is empty. Three black and green tall-boy Monster energy drinks sit open on Igarashi’s desk, pushed into a back corner. Another can waits on the right side of the desk, along with a pen and a short stack of papers. The top paper is a dense black and white document, with 10 point text, numbered down the side for easy callouts, neatly arranged into paragraphs, headers, and consistent margins. Scrawled across the paper are unreadable handwritten notes with jagged lines connecting them to parts of the document, some crossed out with lines punching through the cheap A4 paper. Under it another paper with a colored background and pie chart, neatly labeled with a “Confidential Deloitte consulting” sticks out. In the middle of the desk a steel grey HP laptop is open, its clock reading 10:24 am. A messaging app fills the screen, showing a chat group with 34 people in it. The top of the chat is all short answers and replies “Please fill in your section in the QBR by this Friday”, “Do we have guidance on length from leadership”. Then, from Igarashi, a message that takes up the entire middle of the chat. Some words are bolded, a few exclamation points are thrown in. “What is the value of a central team? What is your ROI?” “I am not aligned with this decision” “Our data shows that clients value price parity and feature development, not rebranding”. The chat stops there, the empty space glaring back in answer.
Sato Sushi
This short piece I wrote for a writing class on Character development. The assignment was to create a short scene with two characters from things I recently read, and then add a third character of my own creation. The first character in our scene is Hugh Glass, the main character from the Revenant. Glass is a hard frontier man who wants revenge and to get his gun back from the men who betrayed him. He has a strong relationship to the American frontier, which both awes him and tries to kill him continually. The second character is the persona Walt Whitman adopts for his collection of poems in Leaves of Grass. In it he is an explorer, of both the physical landscape of frontier America and of the more philosophical experience of nature, and a zen like reveling in life itself as it is. In our scene both are wildly out of place in a small fishing town in Japan, Onjuku. Sato owns and runs Sato Sushi, the one restaurant that is reliably open in Onjuku. Glass wants to take a boat out of Onjku and back to America. Walt wants to have a friend to talk to. Sato just wants to have a calm night so he can leave early and go to bed.
Scene:
Glass ducks his head through a Noren curtain labeled “Sato Sushi”, and surveys the interior of the bar. Six wooden barrels sit in front of a low counter made from dark wood, smooth with use. Manning the counter stands a stocky Japanese man with a bandana across his forehead, a blue apron, and a large knife in one hand. Sato he assumes. Behind him white Sake bottles fill the wall, each with a script of characters on its front. A tall white man in a cotton shirt and triangular beard sits hunched over the bar. Sato looks from Glass and back again to his previous white customer, waiting for someone to explain the impossible level of foreigners in his shop. Glass ignores his gaze and sits down. Squinting at a menu on the wall, Glass realizes has no idea how to read Japanese and after days of hiking over the Boso peninsula, he’s too hungry to care what he eats. He puts a handful of coins on the counter and says “whatever you have”. Sato continues to stare for a moment before taking the coins and saying in Japanese to no one in particular “I don’t understand one word of what you are saying, but grilled mackerel and sake for you, please wait a moment”. Watching the exchange, Walt chuckles and sits up from his drink. “The sailor, the trapper, the traveler. I welcome him as I welcome myself!” he blurts in the direction of Glass, throwing his arms wide as he speaks. Glass offers no response. “Captitain, O my captain, your trip is completed here! Come share your tale.” Glass glares at him and says sharply “I am a captain no longer, nor my trip finished. Where may I find passage across the Pacific, back to America?”. Walt ponders a moment then addresses Sato as he delivers a plate of grilled fish. The exchange between Walt and the proprietor continues and as Glass eats, Sato's muscles tense, and lowers his voice, almost hissing his answers. Finally, Sato storms off into the back, ending the conversation. Walt watches him leave before turning to Glass “The mysterious ocean ebbs, bringing impalpable breezes and storms as black as night to us. We must wend these shores until this storm passes before moving on”. Glass’s look sours and he takes a long drink of the fragrant sake. He'd rather travel alone, but it may be helpful to travel with this man who speaks and knows the local ways, and there is safety in numbers for what he is facing. Glass extends his hand across the empty seat between them and says “The name is Glass”
The monument IV
Eric unlocks the buzzing phone to a hand holding a stubby GPS labeled “Onjuku Miskatonic Marine Institute” on its side. Flat grey ocean stretches out behind the hand. In the far upper corner of the photo, sky and ocean are connected by blurred streaks of black, forming a dark swath across the scene. Eric can make out what must be house size waves in the darkened area and pulls in a breath of excitement. Looking below the photo, and translating from the texts Japanese to his native English, Eric mouths “Almost there. Looks like rough seas…do we really need to be out here?” He sighs and replies, “Yes, I am very sorry for the inconvenience, but appreciate your support in setting up the data collection buoy. Mission make OMMI famous together start!. A bored face emoji and a thumbs up appear on the screen.
Eric replaces the phone and swings a backpack to his chest, pulling out a tripod with a laptop attached to it. After a quick inspection, he mutters “drop the buoy out there, put the receiver up here, data goes from there to here, we figure why the Kuroshio is expanding, and then we get our research published”, his free hand pointing in time with his thoughts. Satisfied, he slips the machine back and looks up to a mountainous path in front of him. A dense green forest falls off to the left, and to the right a white cliff face with jagged angles protrudes upwards. He can hear the ocean softly lapping into the shore beyond it.
As he walks briskly up he sees a small cave in the stone cliff. He stops mid stride, and peers in, making out a statue in the back wall. With its snake-like body, thin whiskers, and lion-like face Eric imagines a Chinese dragon. But while the figure's left arm holds up a sphere, where the right arm should be, a mass of thick stone tentacles bursts out of the body and into the wall. Eric stares at the statue with a confused look on his face and mutters “Where have I seen that - Something in the Institute library?” Pulling back from the cave, thoughts keep flowing “The box with the war time photo of the Institute staff? Or the file of that old Spanish Galeon crash research?”. He tries desperately to grasp the connection as he returns to his stride up the trail.
Lost in thought, Eric walks on until suddenly he breaks free of the forest. He stands in a sandy path running the length of a short mountain ridge. The path ends in a rough circle before falling back into the forest below. Incongruously, jutting out of the sand circle is a tall grey stone obelisk, its details somehow blurry in his mind. Involuntarily, Eric’s eyes slip to the ocean behind it where Eric can see the black mass of the Kuroshio, now with strands of mist flowing out of it across the sea. He concentrates and looks back at the obelisk feeling it twist in his vision and quietly says “How have we not seen that from the Institute? We're right down there".
Breaking his concentration, Eric’s phone rings urgently. “Hey, what are you doing?! Hurry up! It's too dangerous to stay here long.” Yells the voice on the other end. Kenji again Eric thinks, but a deep rumbling in the calls background makes it hard to be sure. "I am very sorry, I just arrived and will set the receiver up as soon as possible” Eric shouts back. A moment's pause, then a softer reply “It's getting weird out here Eric, the visibility has gone to shit. Clouds or something in the air. And how can the waves stay just in this circle, I don't get it” The call drops with another loud rumble.
Eric skirts around the structure, drops to one knee, and reaches back into his backpack. Soon he is back up, extending the tripod and laptop up with him. The laptop flashes and the words “signal strength” appear with text showing 0% to the right. Eric begins pressing the directional keys, while looking between the screen's readout and the ocean, the number moving up and down as he works. Finally the readout settles at 96% before flipping into a similar “GB received” display.
Eric stands up from the laptop and pumps his fist once in the air, a wry smile on his face. Still smiling, he sends a text "Receiver up, data coming in from the Kuroshio. Get back soon, safety first!” and squats down. He opens a small can of coffee from his backpack, lets himself lean back against the structure, and lets out a long relieved sigh. As Eric lazily sips his coffee and watches, he notices the mist expanding into thick bus size tentacles of grey that blot out the horizon and push outwards to the shore. One large tentacle is slowly reaching out towards him, “maybe forming a bridge between me and the Kuroshio, just like our data” he thinks smiling again at himself.
Suddenly, the mist touches the obelisk, and events superimpose together in Eric’s head. The laptop makes a sound like tin foil being smashed and turns black. Where his back touches the structure, shocks of electric ice rip through him, along with a blinding migraine. His hands involuntarily pull to his forehead, and the can crushes into his temple. Through dripping coffee, he sees the mist ripple, somehow turning inside out as an immense, something is pulled from the outer reaches of the mist’s tentacles back towards the ocean. A stomach churning shriek spews from the cell phone, the sound twisted and stretched into something unrecognizable. On the verge of unconsciousness, Eric feels a presence seeping through him from the structure, feels an impossibly heavy weight in his mind, and a malicious, uncaring thirst to know.
The call
I made the below short story as part of a writing course, the assignment being write a 500 word story where character has to choose between a physical object they want and an antidote to a disease which will kill them in 24 hours. AI rejected the first draft for quality and adhering to the assignment. I re-wrote the thing focusing in on a single scene, and found that despite being obvious “Show dont tell” is both powerful and easier said then done.
Final draft
The window above rattles as another black wave slams into the rocky cliff. I look back down at the next dull white cardboard box on the shelf, this one labeled Showa 13, and calculating these records are from 1938. Too early I think, but I run my eyes over them, just the same. “Fish collection record - June”, “Katsura bay coral growth observations”, “Katsuo populations of the Boso Katsuo”. The titles spark no visions of black waves as big as cities, no slithering ropes of lettering, and none of the electric sensations of power flowing through me that I have been chasing. Not this one I think.
Pushing the box back, I notice a droplet red fall to the floor from my face. A public warning, coming between the morning news, rings in my ears. “The phenomenon known as the “Call” is caused by atmospheric anomalies from the Kuroshio current. Symptoms include headaches, visual hallucinations, and psychosis. This stress can damage the brain, resulting in permanent damage and death within 24 hours. If you experience nosebleeds with these symptoms please contact your doctor.” I pause, my heart pounding. Still hovering with indecision, my eyes are drawn to a wooden crate sitting half in shadow below. It is darkened with rot and stenciled with military style Kanji for “coastal defense unit”. Pushing my panic aside, I move towards it.
I'm kneeling down on the cold concrete when my phone buzzes. “You have been selected for a new Call vaccine trial. Visions and any other symptoms you may be experiencing will be cured. If you are not able to receive the vaccine today at Tokyo University, due to limited supply, you will no longer be eligible”. I glance at my wrist. It's only 17:33, if I leave now, I can get there in time, maybe. I weigh my choices; go back and survive haunted by these visions or find the book here, now, and hold its power in my hands, even for just one minute. It's an easy choice. After months of chasing visions, there is little left back there.
I dump the crate onto the ground and recognize unintelligible kanji carved into a book cover. Inside I find typed pages detailing the wrecking of a Spanish Galeon, the San Francisco in 1609. According to the report, the ship hit a strange storm off the coast and wrecked here, where the Miskatonic Onjuku Marine Research Institute, and I, now stand. I read “Our measurements indicate a large underwater formation as the origin of the small bursts..” I read on and my body pulled tight. I feel a danger here far too great to fight or even witness, something old and very wrong. As I try to get up, my body refuses to move. I know the books secrets now. The visions don’t mean anything, they are mere echoes rippling outward from the thing under the water into all of us.
First draft
I listen to the message half way between the dock and the boat, on top of a rotten timber plank. “Please come to Tokyo University Medical hospital emergency wing B today. This is completely new…..the water borne infection…”. I glance down at my wrist. Despite the ink black tentacles of clouds it's only 16:03, if I hurry I could make the last express train back to Tokyo, maybe get there in time.
I look at the boat, where the others were hunching down, bracing against the rocking boat and the upcoming ride. Kenji looks across, a questioning look in his tired eyes. “Will you be coming? This was your idea, your location.” barely audible over the ocean.
We were studying the Kuroshio, one of the four major global ocean currents. It unexpectedly moved closer to Japan over the last two years, bringing a 30 kilometer wide zone of choppy waters, unpredictable powerful currents, and potential disaster for the region right to our coast. We’d exhausted our funds sending a dozen instrument filled buoys in to gather data, hoping to predict its movements and give warning to the world, or at least grant money to keep the Miskatonic Onjuku Marine Institute afloat for a few more years. But each of the previous bouys disappeared into the ocean without any readings or GPS transmitted, leaving us without insights or resources.
“Sorry just one minute”. I slipped a backpack off my left shoulder, dropped the phone in, and felt the book pressing into my body.
I’d told them that I used AI to predict where we could find our buoys. I lied. Of course, I had tried but I stubbornly refused to acknowledge the Kuroshio existed, erroring out when the name of the black current was mentioned. In desperation, I’d searched our pre-internet institute archives, and found the book, bound in crimson leather and buried behind a cardboard box. With it was a black and white faded photo of six seriously looking Japanese soldiers and typed records dated in the war years describing research on a Spanish Galeon sinking in the region around 1868.
The map was meticulously hand drawn, and as I later confirmed, to scale. It showed the Kuroshio in its current position, close to the coast, which should have been impossible. Even stranger were the notes scribbled across the map. They were not Japanese kanji, or any language I recognized, more like interlocking ropes than writing. The letters gave me gut wrenching vertigo. But gradually, my eyes watering as I stared at the map, and a pitch black presence seeping into my mind, I began to understand their horrible meaning.
There is no going back now. I know where we will find our buoys, what took them, and what it wants. I step across the plank into the boat and hunker down, I’ll give it Kenji first.
Structure analysis
After writing a few posts it became clear to me that, in fact, I have no natural born gift to immediately export the vibes and scattered ideas in my head into something another human would willing consume, I decided to take some creative writing classes. Specifically the Wesleyan Creative Writing Specialization course, you can some assignments from there under the process tag in the blog. As part of that I am thinking about story structure and enjoying analyzing some short cosmic horror stories I have been reading from "New Cthulhu the recent weird” (nice byline). Thought I would share some of the ones I liked here.
Fair Exchange by Michael Marshall Smith
Action: Thief breaks into a house with his partner and finds a strange rock
Background: We learn more about the setting, the thief, and those around him
Development (long middle): We find the stone is very valuable, the stone starts to be very valuable personally to the Thief creating tension, a bar conversation gets the Thief thinking about what he does and who he does it to, thief goes on his own to scope out the house gain, sees and meets the people in the house (they are weird), and eventually robs the same house again.
Climax: Thief is caught
Ending: (very short) Whole set up is twisted. Thief is consumed by the people in house? the owner? turns into devils bargain situation. Thief sacrifices those around him for more stones.
Comment: I really liked the ending of this story, just a 3 short and concrete sentences change the character, his impact on world, and how we view character.
turns the whole thing on its head and implies far more than it tells.
The call (course version)
I woke to thoughts of ink black tentacles sliding against each other and a throbbing pain in my right foot. (Action) Peeling sticky blankets off my body, a bloody red scab and a dark blue ring surrounding it bore into me, that had certainly not been on my leg yesterday when I felt, what I thought at the time, was a bug bite there. (Background). I stumbled to the bathroom, and finding my first aid kit, squeezed anti onto the wound, and finished my treatment by slapping a bandaid on it. Immediately my vision began to shrink as the edges were consumed by an inky black, and my mind once once again taken hold of by an impression of an immense malicious tentacle, so large that it seemed to have its own crushing gravity. In this state, I rushed to my phone and dialed the nearest hospital, hoping to speak to a doctor, to find assurance that this was just a bug bite, that this nightmare would be better in the morning. (Development) But when the finally a doctor came on the line, if one ever did, I had already succumbed to the darkness and had fallen helpless to the ground. (Climax). When I woke again and on the living room floor, late afternoon sun was pushing its way through my curtains. In its light I saw the ring was now a deep inky black and grown in tentacle-like blotches to cover my ankle. In that moment I knew if I was to save myself, the solution would not be found in a doctors office, but in the sea where this evil came from. (Ending)
The monument III (Course version)
Mike looks up and squints at the overgrown path cutting through the darkly forested cliff, feeling the cold stone of the monument he knows awaits him at its pinnacle under his hand already. As he stares, Mike suddenly clutches a hand to his temple as searing pain explodes through his mind, along with a memory, of sorts, a looming presence of something old, expansive, and malicious barely held back by a weakening ring of grey . A voice inside Mike yells “Danger this way, terrible, unspeakable danger this way. To ascend is to enter darkness!”, but as always, Mike pushes down this voice, trusting in his own cunning, experience, and preparation to bring him though. As he starts up the path, putting one heavy lug soled hiking boot on the trail, he pretends that he cannot hear the voice pleading with him to turn back away from this unknown and fearful path, and back towards the safety of town with its lights, humans, and cars all moving with predictable regularity and logic. Half way up the hill, and around thirty minutes later with his legs beginning to tire, and his mind unnaturally exhausted an opening in the cliff face appears on his right. A cave, about the size of his tatami room back home, with a few filthy trash bags and discarded appliances carelessly thrown into the cave, and again instinct cries out “the people here do not care for this place, they defile it as a warning to others”, and again Mike ignores this unnessiary and unasked for intrusion. Finally, his mind in a near constant battle to focus on the trail and ignore his worries, Mike turns a corner and the path opens up into a gravel right overlooking the ocean with more dark hills on the left, unending ocean in front, and the small beach town he came from on the left. The monument stands, a strange dark stone structure that seems to shift in color as he walks towards it, tricking his eyes. As his hand reaches out to touch the stone, in a last desperate effort the voice lets out a sharp yell, like what Mike imagines a crow might make if it flew into a wall, and goes silent. Finally Mike touches the monument, and a smile spreads across his face, but only for an instant. Then his eyes lock onto the horizon, his hand stiffens, and he knows no more.
Fishing Trip
Asleep awaked by a dream. Lights haunting the waters outside. Boats? Something else? Missing fisherman?
KYON II
I heard the Kyon last night, what a bizarre-o creature. They are really cute when you see them, fluffy tails, fun sized little things. But man, at night they sometimes scream like bloody murder. I mean that literally. The sound is something like sad baby being murdered, thats the only way I can describe it. Like a lost child, or a mother screaming for her lost child, dispair and sadness, far more than I would think a animal even capable of. As I was nodding off to sleep, I heard it somewhere outside by the beach. I thought someone was out there! So I turned over and opened the curtain to get a better look
Kyon I
I saw my first Kyon today. Cute little buggers, like a miniaturized deer or something. I was up early with the sun, and walked around the beach, into the forest, and back again. Saw one on the beach and two in the forest, although one of those might have been a cat or a big bird as I just heard it.
Hello world
What is my idea? And just where did it come from? And why am I writing about this just now? Let me try to answer that. My idea was to make a Lovecraftian short story. I had the vague idea that the story should have three elements 1) Be set in and incorporate the often strange world of Onjuku, Japan, which I have been visiting for at least 8 years now and which has become a second home, away from the big Tokyo city 2) The main character should die or suffer some horrible fate 3) The main character should be a alternative version of myself, as some way to exorcise my own existential demons, or at least make them “real”. Where did the idea come from? Well, a few times I have been searching for my next fix of cosmic horror and thought “I think I could something like this or maybe better, I should just do that”. Just one day I did something about it. Why now? Who knows, some extra time (not really), better mental place (maybe), random photons hitting me in the head (probably).
From there I thought I would try to make the story into bit size chunks, perhaps because of my previous experience in writing a big book that was a lot of work to edit and play with as one big document. As Lovecraftian works are frequently found journals of some kind it seemed to make sense, and since I already had a website on this page from my previous book, I thought I would just jump in and make some blog posts that would flesh out the book. The first post was a police report, the premise being the main character has died, someone has come looking for him, and found these journal entries.
Over the course of about 10 days I vomited ideas, mostly for events, people, places in Onjuku that if taken in a different context could be quite eerie or fit well in the genre. I had two revelations during this process 1) I quite enjoyed the wring, far more than I was expecting. I think its something to do with having a creative outlet and building worlds, and being able to express my ideas through a medium I can control (as opposed to just blurting things out that I cant re-edit!) 2) I have perhaps no experience with creative writing and what I was writing was pretty gosh darn terrible. Embarrassingly so. I also had, and still have an idea that this could be some kind of video game, perhaps something very lightweight like a choose your own adventure book or such, maybe make a few bucks at some point in my life. So with those ideas and still being rather excited about all this, I enrolled in a creative writing course (I was “on” Coursera anyway for professional skill building) and am giving this thing a try. Wish me luck!
Police report
It all begins with an idea.
Chiba prefecture police office - incident report
The superintendent of Sea Side surf, Tanaka hideo, an apartment in Onjuku Japan turned over the following documents to Chiba-shi police station one the day of 2027-04-01. According to Takanak-san, the documents were found in number XXXXX apartment during search. XXXXXX owner Eric had not paid 管理組合 fees for 12 months, and as per apartment regulations was evicted (see document XXXX). During the eviction process, while Eric was not found, the following documents were found on subjects desk
New apartment
It all begins with an idea.
Journal entry 2025-02-01
Got an apartment out in XXXXXX (OJ stand in) today! XXXX (realtor stand in) and I took the express train out, after I saw a add on XXX (sumo stand in). The apartment is right on the way to the beach, funny I never really noticed it before, even though I must have seen in dozens of times. We, the 管理員 me and XXXX went to the apartment and it looked ok. A 1LDK as they say, and a rather large one at that. Had some weird angles to the walls, and the carpet looked a bit old, and the light was not great, but it was cheap (28K) fairly well maintained, and enough for a single guy like me. Then the 管理員 asked if I wanted to see another room that was empty and we agreed, he seemed to really want to show it too us. This one was more impressive, 2LD with a gorgeous view of the ocean right after walking in the door. A corner room, with lots of windows, are more open lay out and a lot more space. XXXX (GF stand in) would have hated it! The kitchen is run down and rusting, the door is so beat up from ocean and salt that its warped and missing parts on the bottom corners, the tatami has that special old musty tatami smell that screams moldy ryokan, and the kicker, the last owner ripped out the AC, just leaving a hole in the wall. But these are things that can be fixed. The view, the space, and the light will be perfect! Cant wait to get started fixing it up.
The monument
It all begins with an idea.
Hiked up to the monument today. There is some history here of a Spanish galleon wrecking on the shores, and the residents saving them, helping them rebuild their ship, and sending them on their merry way. What a dramatically different version of the “Spanish pull up onto the shores of a foreign country and meet locals” than the one we are used to hearing in North America. The view was stunning. To the left lush green falling off into ocean cliffs. To the front open Pacific ocean and the right the beach with its little town. Can even see my apartment from here! There were kite halks floating around the peak, smaller swallows and tits flitting in and out of the woods below. And the ocean. I dont have the words to describe it properly. Blue, black, white where waves flowed through yes. And there were waves, coming from multiple directions and long undulating movements. At the shore, the ocean looks like what I am used to seeing. But further out, this is something different.