This isn’t a story about Jinbocho. It’s a story about Yokohama.
I headed down there toward the end of April. My destination, as usual, was a certain live music venue I frequent, but since I arrived a bit earlier than expected, I decided to stretch my legs as far as Yamashita Park. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d set foot in the place. It felt like another lifetime entirely.
The rose garden happened to be open to the public, overflowing with a quiet explosion of colors. I walked along, gazing up at the Marine Tower, feeling exactly like a tourist who had wandered into someone else’s vacation. The strange thing is, I find myself in this neighborhood at least twice a year. Yet, for some reason, spending time this way always leaves me feeling slightly out of place.
The live venue sits a bit further down, heading toward Honmoku. And whenever I walk through Shin-Yamashita on my way there, a particular fragment of 1994 invariably floats to the surface of my mind.
It was back when Sega opened its very first Joypolis there. I had invited a girl I was fairly close with at the time to go check it out with me. As it turned out, that was our first real date. What I remember most vividly is the rain. It was relentless. We walked all the way from the station, the two of us huddled under our umbrellas, navigating the long stretch of wet asphalt.
At the time, I was absolutely certain I would never forget that afternoon. I thought the memory would remain etched inside me forever. But now, having crossed the threshold of fifty, the reality is quite different. I can no longer recall what her face looked like. I have no idea what we actually did inside Joypolis, or what we ate, or what we talked about. Everything has dissolved into a pale, featureless fog. The only things that remain, with a strange and stark clarity, are the sheer weight of that downpour and the tactile sensation of walking side by side under those umbrellas.
With those thoughts rattling around in my head, I eventually found myself standing at the very front row of the live house, watching an idol performance. A passing thought crossed my mind: I will never forget today. But I caught myself and smiled. I knew better than that.
The truth is, memory is a fragile, unreliable thing when left to its own devices. It doesn’t hold up well over the long haul. It requires a physical anchor — some tangible object from that specific coordinate in time — to serve as a retrieval mechanism. Without that matter, the mind simply lets things drift away.
Once I reached that conclusion, the act of buying merchandise at the venue suddenly felt entirely rational. I wasn’t just buying idol goods. I was constructing a physical archive to preserve a slice of time. I was buying a backup device for my own mind.
On the way home, I stopped by a small place and had some oden. It was exceptionally good. So good, in fact, that I suspect I’ll be able to pull it out from the drawer of my memory years from now, even without a souvenir.
— Yokohama, April