Ridgeline subscribers — Hello! It’s me, Craig Mod. I’m doing an event with David Marx in Tokyo this Friday night (17th) at Tiger Mountain, a small, hip bookshop. The in-person tix are all sold out, but it will be livestreamed, and there are still tickets for that bit. It costs about seven bucks, and would make the small bookshop running it super happy to sell more tickets! (Although I realize the timezone difference is terrible for most readers …)

Ridgeline subscribers — For the last ten days I’ve been walking around London. Mostly in a little corner of it in the northeast part of the city. But can you even call a part a “corner” when the city extends in every direction without stopping? Whatever you call it, I’ve been in my little northeast section (if not corner) spending mornings reading and writing until I’m cross-eyed and then afternoons walking the streets over and over again.

Roden Readers — There is sweat and then there is s-w-e-a-t and the out-of-doorsness in Japan is presently a natural machine that produces nothing but sweat and sweat and sweat and swelter. Dryness has been eradicated. Fire is impossible to start. Blowtorch any single thing and it will laugh in your face. The implicit ubiquity of moistness inspired Japanese dictionary publishers to excise “dry.” A useless word. The only sane response is to find a cool cave at the top of a mountain and hibernate until November. (Or go to Victoria, Canada, which I did; more on that below.)

Ridgeline subscribers — Man, it was fun talking with Kazunori Hamana back in January. He’s lived a bizarre life, seemingly one without a roadmap, though I suspect his laid-back, subtly-goatee’d vibes belie a cunning streak. He was welcoming and rough-edged in a disarming way. He lives out in the wilds of Chiba, in an area that feels like it may cease to exist without his presence in ten or fifteen years. Many lives ago, he lived in the wilds of Shibuya, running a select / used-clothing shop called “Blues” out of Ura-Harajuku (back when Ura-Hara was a place you’d catch whispers of on rogue Usenet forums, or in copies of TOKION snatched from Casa Magazines in the West Village, if anywhere; today it is splayed about TikTok like a glazed ham at Old Country Buffet) and driving around in a Ferrari. Now he drives a kei-truck and spends all the money he makes selling his incredible pottery on buying land and old homes on the Chiba coast, setting up artist residencies, creating space for artist communities to take root.