entry 1: nishi-shinjuku (april 2)...

the weather was gray but not cold. i had soup from the convenience store for breakfast and felt sluggish all morning.

i was just running an errand. needed memory. prices had tripled in six months—10,000 yen to 30,000—and it annoyed me since my machine had died exactly now of all times. the shop i ducked into didn’t even have a proper sign, just a paper taped at the stairwell. inside: moldy smell, dust like old incense. cardboard boxes of parts stacked like pews. i remembered the american toy shop that used to be here - same awkward lighting, same cramped hall.

in one box was a strange module: the terminals looked normal, but where the chip should have been was a tiny red vial, wired to the board like an afterthought. i asked the clerk. he wasn’t japanese, didn’t know much english either. he smiled, said: “memory. two gigabytes.”

i bought it because it felt fated, even though i pretended it was a joke.