When I Turn On The Lights Will I Still Be Me
April 21, 2024
We haven’t been posting (either in this blog or on our youtube channel) for a while because we’ve been struggling with how much longer we can keep selling out our souls and convictions for money in this late-stage capitalist nightmare we are all trapped in.
After a particularly depressing 70+ hour week, we threw a few random cameras in our car and drove up to the Tohoku region of Japan to try to capture a few remaining cherry blossoms. It was a long drive, but reminded us of road trips we’d take when we were younger - in fact we made this very same trip many years ago in the past when the world was simpler.
The freefalling yen has brought with it droves of overseas tourists - more than Japan has ever seen in the past.1. And while on this trip we were fairly far off the beaten path at times even in these semi-inaccessible areas there were still throngs of tourists swarming about, the vast majority of which were from overseas (as opposed to usual cherry blossom tourism which until recently was still heavily domestic).
Anyway, we got a few decent shots, enjoyed opening up the throttle2 on some of the more remote stretches of sparsely populated highway, and had a couple of pretty amazing meals whilst gazing up at the dark starry nights alongside the ocean. Not a bad way to spend a spontaneous weekend.
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And sadly it must be noted that with the absolute rock-bottom affordability enabled by the bargain-basement yen, more and more ill behaved tourists are unfortunately also increasing - something which we see everyday with our own eyes. We don’t engage in gatekeeping but it makes us sad to see much of the order and polite manners tied together by an unspoken social contract in many aspects of Japan utterly disregarded and trampled over by (relatively few, but outsized in impact) ill-behaved tourists, resulting in some of the anti-tourist initiatives that we’ve seen in other countries also starting to be implemented here. ↩
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Within the speed limits, of course. ↩
