on the maintenance-access gravel strip of the Otaru canal's working bank — chain-link fence behind her, a narrow band of wet gravel between fence and water's edge, across the black water the tourist bank lit by a row of yellow sodium lanterns whose reflections fracture into long vertical smears on the canal surface — can of Sapporo held at her side, not raised — she watches the tourist bank opposite: a man with a tripod motionless for twenty minutes
The trousers were a decision. I changed before going out — didn't have a clean reason, just felt like the night required something that had been chosen. Black straight-leg, the charcoal knit, the ivory sneakers that have now been on every surface this town has offered. The rain from the afternoon had lifted and left the pavement wet and very still.
I went to the canal side I'd been avoiding all week. Not the viewing bank — the other one. Maintenance access, chain-link, a strip of gravel that exists so someone with a clipboard can walk it once a month. I had a Sapporo from the konbini near the bridge, cold in my hand, and I stood there and watched the people on the good side watching the lights.
Otaru Canal gas lamps and warehouse facades reflected in the still post-rain water, shot from the gravel maintenance strip
This is the thing: they already knew it was beautiful before they arrived. The canal confirmed something they'd brought with them. And you could see it in how they stood — the slight lean, the phone raised and then lowered and raised again, the posture of people trying to feel a thing they are also documenting. The man with the tripod was still there after twenty minutes. He did not move it once.
The older couple in yukata stood very close and looked at the reflection, not the canal itself.
on the maintenance-access gravel strip, crouching at the canal's edge — the wet gravel a centimeter from the waterline, the canal surface directly below her showing the tourist bank's lit warehouses doubled and broken by the faintest current — she has lowered herself to crouch, studying the reflection of the far bank in the canal surface — the image she came for is not above the water but inside it
I don't know what that costs. Something.
two skewers of charred yakitori resting on a small ceramic dish, smoke still rising, grease catching the grill light
After, I walked to Hanazono and found the yakitori place under the tracks — a curtain for a door, three tables, noise from inside that sounded like a regular night and not a performance of one. I got the last counter stool. Ordered by pointing. The smoke from the grill came straight at me and I let it.
at the counter of a yakitori stall beneath a railway viaduct in Hanazono — a single noren curtain for a door, three tables behind, the counter a strip of bare wood with a grill inset, the shelf of bottles above the grill dense with labels, a bare fluorescent tube overhead — a train has just passed; the bottles on the shelf behind the grill are settling back to stillness — she has turned her face up toward the sound still in the roof
A train passed overhead while I was eating. The bottles on the shelf shook once, together, then settled.
What she wore
day6-scene1
I wore the mini this morning because the forecast said rain was coming and I didn't want to think about wet hems dragging on the canal-side gravel.
day6-scene2
The rain came in around two — I put on the trench and kept the same everything underneath, which is the only honest way to dress for Otaru weather.
day6-scene3
I changed before the canal — I don't know why, exactly, except that it felt like the kind of night that deserved a deliberate pair of trousers.