いつか — itsuka — someday
Japan —— a country I know by its games first
DREAMING
A door I am still knocking on.
ScotlandCities
- Tokyo Where half the Cartridge wing was made.
- Kyoto Temples, gardens, and the slow trains between them.
The table
- Ramen The real, regional, argued-about kind — a different bowl in every city.
- Okonomiyaki The savoury pancake you cook at your own table; Osaka's, ideally.
- Convenience-store everything I'm reliably told the konbini is a whole cuisine. I intend to verify this.
- Matcha, done seriously Whisked, bitter, and treated with a ceremony the West saves for wine.
Saved pins
- teamLab digital art ↗ Rooms you walk into and become part of; top of the someday-list.
- Konami, Tokyo Not a tour — a pilgrimage. I owe them a Contra continue or thirty.
- A Shibuya used-record shop Lose a whole afternoon in the crates; leave heavier than I arrived.
Imagined itinerary
- 01 Tokyo — arcades and record shops Pay respects to Konami; lose a day in Shibuya's used vinyl.
- 02 Kyoto — temples and gardens Walk the places every game keeps lovingly rebuilding.
- 03 A fūrin, carried home The glass chime this page rings — bought, wrapped, hung.
From the register
I have never been. That’s what this wing is for — the brief says countries I have visited, want to visit, or love learning about, and Japan sits firmly in the middle category, knocking loudest.
It got in through the games: Konami built Contra, CyberConnect2 built the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, and between them they spent thirty years mailing me postcards from a country I’d never seen. The door here is a shōji frame, and the chime is a fūrin — the glass summer bell — because that’s the sound the dream makes. The table and pins below are a wish-list, and the itinerary is imagined, which is exactly what the wing promises: all of it will be corrected by the real thing.