Transcript

Craig Mod: Thank you man. Thank you for coming out. I didn’t, Dexter and I were just talking about I do not understand LA at all. And I did not understand the complexities of the topography of this city and how big it is. I was like, can I walk to the bookstore tonight? It was five hours on Google Maps to walk here.

It took me three days in a car to get here for this event I started on Sunday. So thank you to anyone who doesn’t. Live in Santa Monica. Holy crap. I know how big of an ass that is. Now, I did not know yesterday,

Dexter Thomas: but you’re actually the person who would look up how long it is to walk and they would actually try it.

Craig Mod: I was, yeah. I was tempted. I was like, it’d be a good walk, but I, I didn’t wanna get sweaty for the talk.

Dexter Thomas: Okay. I already am but we’ll talk about that. I walk, eh, like 45 minutes, I thought it’d be nice to just, get a little bit of walking, get, get in the mode, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of getting in the mode so Craig and I know each, actually I just looked up our first email the first email you sent me.

Craig Mod: Okay. Yeah,

Dexter Thomas: actually which is 10 and a half years ago.

Craig Mod: Okay, nice.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s been a while. And we were both in Japan and I think you hit me up actually.

We were talking about ta No, Baba.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: And so Ta no Baba is a neighborhood in. Japan in Tokyo, which is known for, it’s known for a large, famous university. Was City University a prestigious one? But the particular area that we were just talking about is basically known for around this time of year, actually in May.

Okay. It’s known for, if you go there at night, you will see just. Scores of 19 year olds splayed out, just blackout drunk, and you have to step over them and it’s just rivers of vomit. Yeah. That’s what it’s known. If you’re from Tokyo, you know what this is like that’s what, tuck is’ oh yeah.

It’s may you don’t go there now.

Craig Mod: And you were I lived there yeah. For a few years. And I was contributing to the Vomit River significantly when I was younger. And you live there.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah, I was living there for a bit. Actually, no when you. Emailed me. I was living at Shiba house.

You remember Shiba house? I tried. I looked at the email chain again. I tried you to, I tried to get you to come to the party at my house. Because I was living at this commune

Craig Mod: in behind Shibu Station.

Dexter Thomas: Kind of up in the, yeah, up in the Shibu area. If anybody’s seen Terrace House, like there’s a couple people who like are on very early seasons of Tara’s house who lived there.

But it was basically just the commune. It was an apartment. Which was really an art project that you lived in, and somehow I got myself living in there and it was me and a bunch of other people and we had 30 people live there. It was a very small apartment and yes, 30 people lived there and we had one bathroom.

And you, we didn’t get sick often.

Craig Mod: You told me, basically you were all sleeping like gush, like all in the same room, side by side. You just throw stone down wherever there was space to sleep.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. One of the people called it Tetris style. Yeah. So

Craig Mod: anyway I’m excited because on this whole six week tour thing I’m doing, Dexter’s the only person who has any real, like Japan context.

He’s fluent in the language, he lived there. So for him to read this book for me was a real honor. And to be able to do this together is a real honor. So thank you for taking time.

Dexter Thomas: Yo. I was honored to be able to read the book, especially early. And just a show of hands, who, who’s read the book so far?

Okay. You’re, for those who have not read it yet, read it you’re in, seriously, you’re in for a ride. And the people who raise their hands, you, you know what we’re talking about ‘cause you really are in for a ride, but. Speaking of getting to the mode, as I was saying earlier, I am going to actually ask you to pick up the, your own book.

‘cause mine has like notes in it that I don’t want you to read because probably embarrassing, angry note. No, not angry in there. Page 60. Page 60. Okay. Assume the

Craig Mod: pages are the same. This is, again, this is not my idea. Okay. Page 60. Yes.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. And from the, they ask me if you could gimme that. Okay. And just go all the way through, please.

Thank you. To the end. Yes, please. Okay.

Craig Mod: All so the context is I’m staying with a old retired couple and I’m staying at their like bed and breakfast, basically Japanese style. They ask me if I want a Western or Japanese breakfast. Most inns don’t offer a choice. Most are Japanese style only.

So when I get the chance, I go Western if only to shake things up. Big mistake. She bakes me five loaves of bread. Can’t believe I don’t eat them all. The husband keeps gesturing for me to rip them apart and shove them down my g. They stand and watch as I carbo load, they’re unusually touchy. Squeeze my arms, check my body mass index.

They use a translucent garbage bag to wrap up most of the bread. I tie it to my pack like a hobo. Just then a woman who looked in her mid thirties opens the front door, strolls in as if she had been waiting for me to finish. Oh, hey, this is our daughter. The wife says hello. I say, nice to meet you. Your parents are trying to murder me with bread.

She laughs. We chat for a bit. But I have to get walking. The distance looms large, about 25 kilometers with significant elevation to the next inn. As the husband drives me down off the mountain, back to the East AEG path, he breaks our silence by saying she ain’t our daughter. I’m entranced by something out the window beyond the fields, past the dirt road and the forest.

Something burns before I can register what he said. He continues with more fluency. She just appeared seven years back, wandering the country, needing a job, somehow found us. Not a daughter, but like a daughter. Time passes, life moves, and that’s what happens. Things become other things.

Dexter Thomas: Please.

Did you know that was funny when you were writing it? It was funny when I was experiencing it, it was insane. But not everything translates,

yeah.

Craig Mod: And so much of the translation here too, I didn’t do my bad Southern accent, but I think in the audio book I actually do to a Southern accent when I’m reading their dialogue.

Because for me like one of the things that has frustrated me reading a lot of translated Japanese. Literature is, there’s no real acknowledgement of dialect, right?

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And Japan is loaded with dialect and everything kinda gets translated as like B, C, English. And when you’re on this peninsula, which is south of Osaka and it’s remote because of the topography.

There’s some, there’s a funny joke in here about LA that I, I can’t think of right now, but the topography of the peninsula is such that you are, you feel very remote down there. And the access is quite complicated and the roads are pretty narrow. There’s only one train line, and the language is just so fun.

It’s just, it to me. I’ve spent a lot of time randomly in kind of western North Carolina. My dad ended up moving there when I was like 14. Kinda left everyone. Was in Western North Carolina for a while and I would do these weird visits and I ended up, when he he died, he was basically a stranger to me

Speaker 3: and I

Craig Mod: went back in 2011 to bury him.

Everyone else was gone.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And I get this call, Hey, your dad’s passed.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And I’m the only relative left alive to go bury this guy. So I fly down there and it’s just this very surreal, bizarre. Experience of going to bear. You couldn’t have picked a random person out of the phone book and had it done almost more of a stranger than this guy.

And this is in 2011, I went down there and I’m rushing through the, trying to just get, he lived in this kind of small house in the woods, in this tiny town that I’d never been to. And this weird thing happened where I became friends with this lawyer who had the will. He didn’t have much.

My dad had very little, but the will was with his lawyer in town, the only lawyer in town, and he was like 75 when I met him. And he was just this weird southern pulsing, inter, he was so smart, but he was also just, he had never left this town except for he fought in the Korean War and he was a Bernie Sanders, like staunch supporter.

He loved Bernie Sanders and he was just this weird enigma of a guy and he. Took it upon himself to make me believe that my dad loved me. It was very The lawyer. This lawyer,

Speaker 3: yeah.

Craig Mod: He kinda saw me as who, this weird dude coming from China or wherever. And

Dexter Thomas: How often is that actually been said to you?

Yeah. So many times. Oh man I wish we both, if man, we could start a business, something like that. If we could both put the kind of money. That having that ate, where? Where did you go to

Craig Mod: again? I think, yeah, I think my grandmother died, still believing. I like was living in China or something like that.

But this guy ended up becoming this close friend. It was just kinda this mutual redemption thing that was happening. He was trying to make me understand that my father probably had affection for me and then he turns out was a terrible dad for all of his life and he was like an alcoholic and just white liquor up the wazoo and.

Around 42, he just couldn’t drink anymore. Suddenly, like that just couldn’t handle alcohol anymore. He stopped. Wow. Anyway, he has three, three sons and I don’t think he had, he wasn’t the greatest dad and so he kinda saw this as this weird moment I think of adopting me. I was 30, he was 75, but it didn’t feel like that anyway, we just liked each other and I started hanging out with this guy who talked, he’s I used to carry a gun ‘cause everyone wanted to shoot me.

He put so many people in jail and everyone wanted to kill him like when they got outta jail. So he always had his pistol and we would, he just would take me in these little adventures and his wife would come, and I ended up going back to North Carolina several times a year from 2011 till 2020.

Basically, I would go just to visit him. I had nothing else in North Carolina. Wow. I’d go to visit this guy and we’d go on drives. He had his prostate removed at one point. He’s never let him take your goddamn prostate. He, I’m driving around, he’s shit, I just pissed my pants again in your car.

It’s just pee all over the seat. But this guy was so wonderful and his language, I just I felt such an intimacy with his random dude and his sons were so confused. Because they were just like, why is the China man coming back to hang out with my, are you trying to fuck my daddy? I feel like that’s what they were thinking, that I was trying to have sex with their daddy which I was not, I wasn’t even trying to get in his will.

I wanted more of his delicious English. His Southern English was so good. Yeah. So anyway, long story short, when I’m in the peninsula and I’m talking to these people, I’m transported back to, for me, the kinda Western North Carolina, Appalachian Blue Mountains, stuff like that. So when I translated these people.

That’s who I had in mind, and that’s why there’s a sort of vernacular to the translation.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. You, you picked up the question before I even asked it, but I’m gonna keep going further then there you do this a lot in the book actually. When you’re translating, when you’re relaying what somebody says, and for me, somebody who’s for better or for worse read a lot of people who are describing Japan to other people.

They’ll use these things, they’ll use these turns of phrase so that, it’s very obvious this person is Japanese. There’s always some kind of affect in it, there’s always, an italicized speech or something like that. It’s, it’ll always be, I’m sorry, they’ll always slip that in there, which you don’t do.

And this, I think, I know you so I should expect this, but the first couple times I saw. Speech from a Japanese person. I had to reread it. ‘cause I was thinking, hold on a second, this person speaking English or Japanese. And I realized, oh no, they’re just speaking, ‘cause this is something I struggle with too.

Yeah. Like I, honestly, I, when I relay what somebody in Japanese is saying, I sometimes don’t know what to do, honestly. Yeah. Sometimes I’ll just print it in Japanese and say, all right, bro, figure it out. Who are we reading? I’ll just figure it out and then, but I won’t always try to put it in some kind of dialect, but the way that you are doing it, I can sometimes.

And for those who speak Japanese in the audience, like I think sometimes you’ll be able to read things and what you’re getting at, what you’re saying. But I do have, I wanna pick that up, but this, before I forget, things become other things. So he said that,

Craig Mod: yeah.

Dexter Thomas: In Japan. What was that? In Japanese. Oh God. I’ve

Craig Mod: been trying to remember. Yeah. What did he say? Because it was, it’s one of these things where I’m doing these walks and I wrote that down immediately. After the conversation. Yeah. I took the note and I don’t remember the exact phrase, but it was just so bizarre that he was talking to me about this woman who appeared that they introduced as their daughter.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: Hey, this is our daughter. Yeah. And then in the car he had, he confessed to me like, this is five minutes later. That weird need to confess really stopped me in my tracks and he was just talking about. That shifting relationship that can happen with people. Yeah. And in Japanese history, adoption’s a big part of it.

I read about that in the book a bit, but say a little

Dexter Thomas: bit for the people who haven’t Yeah,

Craig Mod: please. Just, when you hear, when you read the, you see that article that says this INN has been operating for 4,000 years with the same family? It’s not the same family. It’s, they keep adopting new people to take on the family’s name and run the end.

So there is this kind of weird. And maybe this is like putting unnecessary Japanese words into translation, but there is this kind of weird mystical orientalism that kind of, I feel like is, can be layered on top of some of this stuff.

That feels a little weird. Like it’s missing the fact that there’s something else at work here.

It’s not that this family has managed to keep this thing going forever. So there’s, there is, but there is this kind of ease of adoption that I don’t think I’ve ever heard about really in, in America in the same way. Of people being adopted into running things or taking over things and taking the names on.

Like I met the guy who ran Mickey Moto, the Pearl Company for a long time. He was at Starbucks sitting next to me and he was this really fancy looking dude and he was retired and I was like, and he was like flirting with everybody. And I was like, who is this guy? And we started talking and he is oh yeah, I ran Mickey Moto and then we became friends and he told me he married into the family and then they adopted him.

He took the name. And then when his wife died, they made him give it all up. ‘cause they didn’t want him to be an untethered Mickey Moto out in the world. And I thought that was pretty interesting.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The fluidity of, and I think, the fluidity of relationships that, that you talk about, frankly it’s throughout the book.

Maybe another thing keeping in theme with. Some of the phrasing or whatever is, there’s a phrase that you use a lot in the book. Yo you

Craig Mod: Yo, I

Dexter Thomas: love this word. Yeah.

Craig Mod: Oh, I’m glad you like it.

Dexter Thomas: Oh my gosh. But it’s one of those things where, okay, so I’m of two minds here.

One is I struggle a little bit sometimes with. You know the, yeah. Have you ever heard about the Japanese idea of kaizen? Like it’s the concept of kaizen and it’s just broke. Kaizen just means improve.

Craig Mod: Right.

Dexter Thomas: That, that’s not a phrase.

Craig Mod: By the way, I met the guy who wrote Ikigai.

Dexter Thomas: Oh no.

Craig Mod: The other day.

He is so traumatized by that. Oh no. Yeah, no, he’s really, it was not his intent to do what he, what happened. I think people, but I think people run with

Dexter Thomas: the stuff, like they don’t even read it and they just run with it. He was,

Craig Mod: he’s as quiet Spanish dude who’s just I wanted to write this book.

We wrote it, and then suddenly his agent had it translated into 75 languages and he sold 14 million copies, and he’s Mr. Iki guy. And that was not, anyway, sorry. Just a side note. No, but I feel so bad for him, but he’s also super rich.

Dexter Thomas: Wait, bad in what sense? In the, just too much attention or the people got annoyed with him.

Craig Mod: Oh, he just the, I think the vitriol like comes Oh no. Is thrown at him. ‘cause people, make fun of his stuff now. Which, ‘cause there is this universe of books that just co-op Japanese words to, try to sell their books or whatever.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. Oh, no, we were talking about somebody else, but Marie Kondo.

Craig Mod: Yeah. What’s her word?

Dexter Thomas: Sparks joy, right? Sparks joy. Yeah. Which is a, for, that’s a good translation of Toki. Mickey. Toki Mickey. Yeah. That’s good. I have nothing with that. But one of the things that I thought was really funny, so I got to interview her and one of the things that we cut out, we cut outta this piece, which in hindsight I wish we kept it, but I just wanted to know for myself.

I asked her. Why in the English edition and probably other editions does it say the Japanese art of tidying?

And she was just like, oh, the agent put it on there.

Craig Mod: Right.

Dexter Thomas: Like I, ‘cause it’s not in the original, it’s just like how to tidy your place and like spark joy or whatever. And somebody slapped Oh yeah.

Japanese on there. Yeah. And she was completely uninterested in that had zero interest in it because there’s, for her, there’s nothing Japanese about it. She just came up with a good way to throw away your old clothes.

Craig Mod: Yeah. She just happens to be Japanese.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. Legit. Yeah. And then, there’s a bunch of money and you could at the end of that rainbow and you can tell that she didn’t seem anti it, but it seemed a little, it seemed a little, it.

She seemed a little perplexed. Still. Even at the stage of, Netflix show she seemed a little perplexed, but it brings all that back. Because Yoyo is one of those words that I have felt like if I’m talking to people, like if I’m talking to somebody who speaks Japanese, it is just one of those things you just switch.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Dexter Thomas: Because you can’t say it in English.

Speaker 3: Right.

Dexter Thomas: If a word has to get out there let it be yoou. But how do you describe yoou? Because you used the word in the book a few times. Yeah, I think

Craig Mod: I describe, I describe it in the book too. It’s realizing I had this space in my heart to forgive.

My father is basically on this walk. I’m in the middle of it. And there was just this kind of moment, the shocking moment where I realized I had grown enough to be able to do that. And it was just, it was very surprising. And the first time I actually ever heard the word used was 20. Five years ago, pretty much right about now, I’d, hi, I’d hitchhiked across Japan.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah,

Craig Mod: so I spent three weeks hitchhiking, blackout drunk the whole time across Japan. It was not, I like, I talk about it in the, like I was just suffering. I was really suffering and blackout drunk. Drunk across all Japan then. Then we flew to Okinawa and then we took a boat to Ishigaki, and at Ishigaki I met a Japanese hippie who had just done a bunch of peyote and I was like, Hey.

Hey, do you, can we go get some ice cream? And he, I remember he respond. He was like, he’s yoou, man. Yoou. He’s this is yeah, I got, we could do whatever you want. Whatever you need. We’ve got the space in our life in our hearts to do that. And I just remember, whoa, he taught me that word.

And quinto, which is how you say Connecticut in Japanese. Yeah. I was gonna say, I don’t know that

Dexter Thomas: word.

Craig Mod: I was like, that’s not what I would expect Connecticut to be translated as. Yeah,

Dexter Thomas: that I, that’s amazing. You remember the time, you remember the, I have vivid

Craig Mod: that’s, you learned the word vivid. Yeah. I have vivid memories of exactly when I learned certain words.

Wow. Is there another one? Yeah. Yeah. T ya, to want to do

Dexter Thomas: something. Yeah.

Craig Mod: I learned, I was walking in o Zu with this woman who, this girl, this fellow classmate who I was in love with, but she. She was also the first person I ever met who was having an affair with a married guy. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And she had a very fancy camera, and I just remember she got that from her. This guy was 25 years older than her, and he was a baseball player and she had this amazing leika and I was so jealous of her Leica. And I was like, how did you get your leika? She’s oh yeah, my boyfriend, who is this like professional baseball player, bought it for me.

But we were walking through Ozu and I was feeling all of the complicated emotions of. Being in love with this person who was taken by a much older man, was a baseball

Dexter Thomas: player, the

Craig Mod: baseball player she was, and she was teaching me different phrases. And I remember that first six months of being in Tokyo we’re so like pregnant with these moments of hearing something or wanting to say something and wanting to express something.

Yeah. And then just asking for it. And I was surrounded by so many great people and teachers and other students who were just several level levels above me. A bunch of kids had studied at SOAs in London.

Dexter Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Which is an

Craig Mod: incredible program. I dunno if you’ve met other SOAs kids. Probably. Yeah. But they do year one in SOAs learning Japanese is so intense, and 90% of people drop out and they arrived.

They were all, they’d only done one year and there were 14 levels of Japanese at Waseda. I was like level two when I arrived. They were done one year and they were already at level 12, 13, so it was just like they were way up there. So anyway, but.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. They had the whole rank there. They had the whole, yeah.

I dropped out.

Craig Mod: I was with Eddie Ko walking in o Am and she taught me how to say, to want things. And I just remember, or YOKA, I learned from this guy Taaka Yokai. Yeah. When I was standing right on the edge of Kabuki Cho standing right there looking at Kabuki Cho, and then I remember learning that word in a, actually in a text from him

Dexter Thomas: in a short mail.

Craig Mod: Okay.

Dexter Thomas: Deka is roger. Yeah. Got it. Roger that. Like some, yeah, somebody said it’s like a military affirmation. It, yeah, it is. It is a military affair. Do you? Okay, do you, okay. Yeah, but people just use it. I, man, I guess I have some like that I something different. Honestly, the only thing that jumps to my mind is this is one of those things when you realize that you don’t know things like you don’t know what you don’t know.

Being actually on the road from Taana Baba to Waseda and. Somebody telling me that my face was small. Oh yeah. Yes. And then I thought that was a little weird and I was just like, okay. Yeah. And then somebody else said it, and I hadn’t been in Japan that long, and I was like, these people are really rude.

That’s what, but also what a strange insult. Like we. I just met you. Yeah. And I, it kept being said to me, and then at some, I don’t remember how I figured this out, but somebody told me, no, that’s a compliment. It’s good to have a small face. And I had a afro at the time, and so I thought it was something about my hair and maybe it did make my hair look, my face looked smaller, right?

But it was utterly bewilder Yeah. For the longest. And it would just be things like that where I would just be, I would hear something and then not get it, and then just suffer. In silence while I didn’t understand what they were saying. Like the first time I heard said a store are you afraid of me?

What? It sound, it sounds like the word for scary. It’s whoa, what are we talking about? At least I thought I did at the time yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot, there’s a lot like that. But yeah, yo Yu is such an interesting word because it really can, it can mean.

When I do try to use it in English, what I end up doing is switching to the word bandwidth, which is this really strange word that we’ve started using just in normal. At least a certain class of people have started using in English. Oh, I don’t really have the bandwidth for that.

Yeah. In Japanese you would say Yoyo, right? Oh, like I, I really don’t have the time for that. I don’t have the mental space. And then it gets a little bit deeper, spiritual, not spiritual space, but just there’s just too much going on in my life. I can’t do that. And so that bandwidth has started to take the place of this word that I think we needed.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: In English a little bit. But yoyou can also mean, if you’re watching, if you’re watching a boxing match or something like that, and one of the boxers is like laughs in the middle oh, that’s Yoou. Like he’s totally got this. He knows he’s gonna win. He’s just like utter confidence.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Dexter Thomas: And so it can really mean a lot of things, but. One of the things that I find interesting that you do in the book is you don’t really exonify it. You know what I mean? And that’s something you could have, you could have subtitled this, like things become other things. It’s Tale of Yoou and Second Edition, right?

Yeah. That’s the paperback. Yeah. There you go. We need to sell some of those. Listen, hey. But what you do more is you just, you use it like that and you use it in these, you use the phrase, you explain it just a tiny bit and then you keep using it through the book in different ways so that I think there’s a way in which it becomes more powerful because you start to understand why you’re using the word, but then also it takes some of that weird foreignness away from it where, because I think one of the things that does tend to happen, with.

Ikigai with Kaizen, you know all these words that, start to, yeah. The Japanese really care about this in their culture. It’s just not, bro. They’re just like, they’re doing stuff like what we do, but it prevents the reader from being able to put it at arms length and identify it as something that is foreign, oriental, Japanese, weird, exotic, and this is just a word.

That exists within the vocabulary of your book, like untethered, like words like that. Yeah. Which is, it

Craig Mod: seems intentional. Yeah. It’s good to hear that you, I that means a lot for you to pick up on that.

Dexter Thomas: So it is intentional.

Craig Mod: Yeah, it’s very intentional. Look, this is my home, right?

This is, I’ve been there for 25 years. I’m not leaving. And so what’s to Exonify? That’s how it’s, it’s where I live and I really bristled even at writing about Japan for most of my life. Really? My, all throughout my twenties, early th I really didn’t write, if you look at my old writing, I was writing about digital books.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: Home. Yeah. I had a book about Japanese, about digital books when, just as a, I was trying to never talk about them again. It was a little complicated relationship with that publisher. They were, they wanted me to really talk about it. I didn’t want to, but no, the writing about it was really at a, at a, as a last resort, like where I felt pushed to a place, I don’t even wanna say earned.

I finally had done enough I’d earned and I put in enough whatever shoe leather or something to

Speaker 3: Yeah, be

Craig Mod: able to write a little bit about Japan. But look, I started walking because in around 20 12, 20 13, I was trying to figure out what, I live here, I need to find. Some purpose, I wasn’t employed by a Japanese company yet. I had, back then it was, I was still on artist visa, but I was getting five year artist visas that were basically, as long as you didn’t murder anyone and paid your taxes, you could keep them going forever. Now I’m on permanent residence. It’s like basically green card.

But you know that when John, one of the guys in the book who’s this sort of mentor, incredible figure, incredible. Again, a guy who never ever. And I, if I learned anything, I’ve learned all this from watching John. He never, others, anyone. He never ex solidifies Japan. He’s 1000000% just meeting Japan where Japan is, needs nothing from it.

I think there is this weird, if you read a lot of the writing in the eighties and nineties about. Asia.

Audience: Yeah.

Craig Mod: It’s people expecting something from the place almost to a certain degree, or writing about it from this elevated position looking down at the place. Try 2020s.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Craig Mod: Sure. Exactly. This is why, this is why I was so terrified to ever write about it.

‘cause I didn’t want to ever in any way write in that way about the place.

Dexter Thomas: Just being realistic, and you and I both know this, we’ve talked about this a little bit. There are people. For whom you are the Japan guy. You are the Japan whisperer. And we know this. Look man, look. And this is, this is something that you deal with as an artist, with an audience, right?

Yeah. And there going further, there are certainly a lot of people who would much rather hear about Japan from a white dude than an Asian face. And that’s just the reality. Yeah. And I. Through the text, through the lines. I do sense a little bit of responsibility that you seem to feel some in there.

Craig Mod: Yeah. And also I think if people pick this up expecting let’s go on a walk on the kimono codo, they’re gonna be let out because there’s a lot, there’s just so much on, I make, it’s not a super easy, breeze through beat read and there’s a lot going on there. And part of that is maybe a response.

To not wanting to be. Just let me take you on this mystical kimo, coto walk, there’s more to it. There’s more layers to it. Yeah. If that makes sense.

Dexter Thomas: You never name your hometown.

Craig Mod: No.

Dexter Thomas: We never talk about this actually, but I did not know really too much about your hometown.

Craig Mod: Okay.

Dexter Thomas: I really didn’t.

And when we, so when we met, when we talked, it was. I don’t know. It’s probably about like similar experiences that we had, being around Waseda and stuff like that. We’re both into music and so I’d been writing about music. You were, we were comparing notes. There we’re all also both into weird, esoteric computer stuff.

We played a bunch of video games. I just couldn’t

Craig Mod: believe that there was this like, interesting intellectual living and taana above. That was like, I saw your Twitter bio. I was sober. Yeah, your Twitter bio. I wasn’t lying in a pool vomit. Exactly. Yeah. So I that I, I saw that. I was like, oh my God, I need to connect with this guy.

And I felt really, I’d seen, you’d been there for a while and I felt oh my God, I had missed years of us being able to hang in Tokyo. That’s really how I felt when we met. Because you were on the way out.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah, I was about to leave. Yeah. We, no, we hung out a bunch and it was in the last, like 12 month.

Yeah, it was like last month and a half that I was there, but. So the thing about you not naming it is not naming the town that you’re from, is I kept reading and I kept wondering, okay, when are you gonna tell me where this place is? Because you never you never, we never talked about that either.

But you know why I appreciated it is because and I don’t know if you intended it, but man, that place is a lot like where I grew up in some really strange ways. You talk about, making. It formerly being a place where, they made airplane engines and what do airplane engines do in the forties?

Where do they fly to? What are they doing? You know what I mean? Yeah. San Bernardino March Air Force Base. Yeah. That’s what we were doing. Yeah. And one of the fir the reason actually I went to Japan for the first time was because there is a sister city relationship between San Bernardino and Tatcha.

Where Tatcha, they had an Air Force base that is now a park March Air Force Base is, we just didn’t do anything with it, basically. The whole like industrial town, depressed, most people don’t leave.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: And I did not know this about you. And then after as reading it, I realized, oh, maybe some of this makes sense now.

I don’t know if I’m totally explaining myself here, but yeah, I think some of our conversations and some of the things that you say and some of the things you do started. To make sense because, and I appreciated that. I don’t know if you’re doing this on purpose, but you’re allowing somebody who experienced, frankly, one of the underlying themes in this book, it really, truly there’s parts that are about Japan, but a lot of this really is about being able to see the violence of American society.

And you really lived in one of those. I don’t wanna say hotspots, but you lived in a very American town.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: You know what I mean? Are you intending for people to be able to see that? Is that why you don’t use the fra don’t use the town?

Craig Mod: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I just think it’s way more universal than just this one place.

I think a lot of people have experienced a similar kind of childhood and, also I don’t wanna shit on my town either. It’s and not that the book is shitting on anything. Yeah. It’s just naming facts, and if you, even if you just look at the gdp, DP. Figures for things.

It’s shocking. These places like post-industrial places like My town, you look at the US GDP, which is so high per capita, GDP in America is so freakishly high.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah, it’s crazy. Reach country in the world.

Craig Mod: 80, 90,000, close to a hundred thousand per capita. That’s bananas. Japan, you know what Japan is?

No. What

Dexter Thomas: is it?

Craig Mod: It’s 30 5K. Really? Yeah, it’s 35, 40 K. It is nuts. It’s like half of the US per capita, GDP, and knowing that it’s really infuriating into a certain degree when you think back on the resources the uneven distribution of resources anyway. And that’s, I think what I feel, what I felt as soon as I got to Tokyo was being in this place where, holy crap, I’m walking past tens of thousands of people a day and the opportunity distribution.

Is way more even than anywhere I had seen. Yeah. And I think that shook me when I got to the city. ‘cause it was illuminating over more and more just how scarcity induced or, scarcity like mindset beset everyone from my town was, and me including even to this day, I’m still catching myself being freakishly scarcity mindset.

Operating. Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. I told you I, I was just in skid row today,

Craig Mod: right?

Dexter Thomas: And it’s super weird being here. But I think maybe that was, maybe, but maybe, maybe that’s the best mode to be in really is because that’s what you do in the book, is you go in this place. And it’s not that Japan is this magical wonderland where everybody’s equal.

‘cause certainly is not. Yeah. And it’s certainly not perfect, but it does, I think being anywhere frankly, lets you realize just how absolutely bizarre. The United States. Is anybody ever compared you to JD Vance before

Craig Mod: God,

Dexter Thomas: I’m

Craig Mod: gonna shave this shave this beard off? No. Thank God. Never. I don’t know.

Dexter Thomas: No.

Have you never thought of this?

Craig Mod: Some people have been like you can be Hillbilly Elegy part two if you really want it. That’s not what I’m going for though.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah, because there’s a lot of people, I interviewed them. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was nuts. You entered, who haven’t you interviewed?

Just those two. Who here hasn’t been interviewed by Dexter? Are you’ve all been interviewed? I’m pulling those out because they’re relevant. They’re, I say that because there is a version of Craig Mod who you said you don’t want to you don’t know shit on your town, right? Yeah.

Because people from his town. A lot of people are super pissed at him.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: Really angry at him. Yeah. I’ve been yelled at for not going hard enough on him. And this was like before the Trump election, like this is in 2016. There are people who are extremely upset at him because they feel like you are talking about us as though everybody’s making the decision to be poor.

Yeah. No, you were paying absolutely no attention to what is happening. On a systemic level. On a societal level, and that,

Craig Mod: and that’s, I hope that comes through super strong in this book. Yes. That’s like the whole core of this book is it’s not any of these people’s fault.

It’s not, the parents’ fault. It’s not, whatever. Brian’s parents’ fault, my parents’ fault. It’s like they were caught up in this system where they had absolutely no decision making power whatsoever, and the trickle down was so anemic, there’s just nothing trickling down.

When I think about, I was in marching band. And we would, I think some of the first moments I realized the disparity, the wealth and the opportunity disparities was going with our marching band to play at like the football game at the Rich High school. Yeah. And just looking at our drums versus their drum, like our drum.

I was hitting the fucking snare drum head that was like 40 years old. I didn’t even know they could last 40 years. I’m going to drum camp up at UMass. I remember I was lucky to be able to go do that and just. I didn’t even know what it was like they were playing on alien instruments. It was just that gap was crazy.

But you realize like the school didn’t decide that no one in the town decided that

Dexter Thomas: anyway. No. This is totally relevant. Yeah,

Craig Mod: and it tries to, the thing I had this kind of rule, which is I’m like, look, I’m just relaying facts about our experience as kids, and not in any way ever blaming anyone who was in that periphery.

Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: I think. The reason I bring that up is, and not just to be goofy, but because I think, especially right now, we are at a stage where we’ve gotten extremely individual. Extremely individual, and we are, we’re often looking for why is something going wrong? Oh, it’s because this particular person made this bad decision and that is why they are

Craig Mod: there.

Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: Skid, people driving the Teslas through, through Skid row.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: That, like I can feel that.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: You know what I mean? And that’s what they will tell you.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: You know what I mean? That, that’s how they feel. And there’s, I can feel the, not just refusal to do that, but almost pushing further and really trying to show the reader, this is why my hometown is like this.

But then also, this is another way. To, this is another way to respond.

Craig Mod: Yeah. You know what I mean?

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: What do you mean by that? Another way to respond.

Dexter Thomas: Another way to respond in cer in sense of how you respond.

And this is again, this is the joke I made about JD Vance, but it’s easy to say I’m special,

Craig Mod: right.

God, no. I’m lucky as shit. That’s all I am. And honestly, I, my response in my twenties was to try to kill myself. That was it. There was no re, there was just no framework, no archetypes, no mentors or anything.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And I think that’s why a lot of people who leave these places that are suffering are, economically depressed, is you try to leave and then you see the abundance out there in others, and that gap is so violent internally, you turn back.

I know so many people who try to leave, try to go, I’m gonna go to New York. I’m gonna figure this out. I’m gonna go to Boston, I’m gonna figure this out. Yeah. And then they just, they can’t do it. Because you don’t have the, almost like the psychological framework to be able to be able to parse out the craziness of that.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And re in the last couple of years I’ve had this weird media thing happen, right? With moca, which is which dovetails with this. I want, I just wanna,

Dexter Thomas: yeah, just, okay. If you’re not familiar with this, also imagine that like a, some combination of Jay Leno. David Letterman, like Larry King, said just imagine putting all those three people together and then that person says, Hey Craig I’d to, interview you and talk to you.

And Craig’s who are you? Just incredible. Like I love how like I, sometimes you tell me people and I have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about. I cannot believe you didn’t know who this cat was, right?

Craig Mod: Yeah. So I, amazing. So a couple years ago, New York Times asked me.

Audience: Tell the story. Yep. But at, maybe after that we’ll do a q and a.

Yep. Amazing One. Sign books. Perfect. I’m like, yeah. Awesome. Sounds

Craig Mod: good. This’ll be a 35 minute story. So a couple years ago, New York Times was like, Hey, do you have anywhere to recommend? And I had been doing these linear walks just to talk about walking a little bit. But I had been doing, Tokyo to Kyo Tokyo, to Tokyo, all around the key peninsula.

Linear, no, no trains, no. Scooters or whatever. And I was like can we do other things? And so I was like, what if I picked 10 mid-size cities that no one ever goes to? And I would walk 50 K in each city and just see how that felt. And so I did it and I went from Oko all the way down to Kushima and went to all these cities.

One of the cities I went to was Boka, and this is in Yate. It’s up north. No one in 23 years had ever told me You should go to moca. And I went to moca and it was. Great. It was just this beautiful little town. Historic, had this castle, park lots of great coffee, good scones, weirdly, really good soba.

He’s 16th generation iron workers just interesting craftspeople. Just a wonderful place. And so in the New York Times was like, Hey, do you wanna recommend a city anywhere in the world? It wasn’t like, Hey, Japan guy, tell us about Japan. I was like, oh, moca. This was like a big shock to me that no one had ever mentioned.

I said, and I really. I wrote my 200 word, fight, like a little thing. You write this tiny little thing and I was like, Ugh. Yeah, this is a good city. And they don’t tell you where it’s gonna be on the list. They don’t tell you if it’s gonna be on the list. The list comes out in January, 2023.

Number one is London, and number two is Morocco. And Japan did not. Understand how to process this. And I felt really bad because I was like, fuck, what do I, how do I help them understand this? And then they found out I speak Japanese. And so then it was just woo, this tidal wave of newspapers and magazines and tv.

Yeah. And the mayor was like, Hey, do you wanna come up and say hello? And I was like, great. I’ll, I’d love to say hello to you, mayor of Morga. And I went up there. And they didn’t tell me anything about anything. And they’re like, oh, yes, Mosan, come this way. He’s in here. And they opened the doors and the room looked like this.

With, except all of you were reporters, and it was just like, network cameras, TV crews. Everyone’s paparazzi, rapid fire, photoing me, and the mayor’s like sitting on a throne in the back and I’m totally normal behavior, totally befuddled, they bamboozled me and I go in the back and I sh and I say hello to the, hello Mayor.

We shake hands. We’re sitting like this. You’re the mayor. And he says two words and he is good luck. And then he leaves me and it’s just this room of journalists and there’s a mic and they stand up and they’re lining up to ask me questions. The first guy goes Mosan, how do we solve poverty?

And I was like, oh man, guys, I just like your coffee. I honestly I’m just so above my pay grade. I don’t have any advice for you as a city, but more and more, I’m doing these. Took those interviews because I felt an ethical duty having put the spotlight on this place. I was not asking for it, and I did not know it was gonna go this big to help them explain and extract from this as much value as possible, positive value and not over tourism value.

And it’s far enough away from tourist areas that over tourism isn’t an issue with him. And, i’d start doing these TV interviews and they’d be like, oh, how, what’s your favorite soba? And I’m like, my favorite soba is national healthcare. And so we just started talking about like, how does a city like this, why does it feel so good to me?

And I’m basically speaking from this place of weird American traumas the Japanese people can’t really empathize with.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. ‘cause there

Craig Mod: aren’t towns like mine in the same, to the same degree in Japan. Yeah. And I’m saying, look, I’m being healed by you guys. And the lives you’ve been able to build and the archetypes you represent for me.

And I wanna make you aware of the things in the social infrastructure that allow that all to happen, that allowed all this goodness I feel to happen because that needs to be protected. So it ended up turning into this really sweet thing, and then this guy, Tom Whaty son reaches out who had no idea who he was and we, he wanted to go to the top, national

Dexter Thomas: treasure.

Craig Mod: National Treasure. He’s been on TV every day for 50 years in Japan. Yeah. And he has not. Sexually harassed anyone. As far as we know. He’s very clean. For an 80-year-old Japanese guy, this is maybe he’s the only one. So he’s got a very stellar reputation and he is beloved by everybody. And we, the kind of the apotheosis of all this craziness was we went for a walk in the city together and it was, I said yes to it, just ‘cause I wanted to give that gift to the city of this guy coming.

‘cause I know it means so much to them. And people just crying, screaming, stopping their cars, like it was like walking with John Lennon. It was really, we walked through this market with hundreds of people and it was just like parting the Red Sea. I was getting goosebumps. I’ve never been next to someone who has been that beloved by everyone from 5-year-old to 85-year-old.

It was pretty, pretty special. But that, that to me felt like a great. Transmutation of what I grew up experiencing.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And the goodness I’ve been feeling in Japan and trying to I don’t know, like emerging from my twenties, not dying somehow and trying to, wrap that up in some sort of interesting package.

The economic impact has been about a hundred million dollars. So amazing. 200 words to a hundred million dollars economic, I’m not gonna beat that. That’s

Dexter Thomas: pretty, that’s a pretty good ratio there

Craig Mod: anyway. It feels, and I’ve been back many times and. It has not destroyed the town. Thank God. Anyway, it’s been an interesting journey, but it feel, it felt I don’t know. Like I was very lucky to end up where I was. Yeah. And to try to do some good with that. Yeah. Felt aligned with that.

Dexter Thomas: So before we go to q and a real quick, lightning round. Yeah. Six questions. Boom.

Alright. So first thing that comes to mind. Answer. Answer honestly. Alright. Sushi or pizza toast. Pizza Toast. Pizza toast. Okay. AYA or Jazz Kisa. Jazz. Kisa. Okay. Alright. Dragon Ball or Aquita

Craig Mod: A kiddo. Only ‘cause I’ve never watched Dragon Ball or Red Dragon Ball.

Dexter Thomas: We were cool until we were friends. Wow. That’s irresponsible of you. Alright. Okay. So fi fill in or finish the sentence. Okay. Instead of ramen, you should eat

Craig Mod: more ramen.

Dexter Thomas: Okay. Instead of Tokyo, you should go to Mor Yoka. Okay. Instead of city pop, you should listen to. Ooh. Okay. Alright. Japanese. Yes.

Yeah. Instead of Helvetica you should use,

Craig Mod: Untitled. Untitled Serif.

Dexter Thomas: I have no idea what that is, but I figured that’s what

Craig Mod: all my books are said. I figured

Dexter Thomas: you had an opinion on that. I just had to get there. Alright, everyone, Craig mug. Thank you. Dust.

So please someone ask questions because otherwise I will keep asking questions because I have a lot. First person up here. Yeah. Go for,

Audience: So huge fan of your newsletters and I remember when you had the popup newsletter for the Key Walk, did you know that something like this book would come out of that walk or were you planning on going into that walk with this sort of idea?

Or did it just come out of it as you’re going through it?

Craig Mod: So the question was when I did the walk that became this book. I did that four years ago almost. I didn’t, right at this moment. I was in the middle of it. I was on day 11 of the walk four years ago right now. And the question was, did I know I was gonna do anything with it?

Absolutely not. No. In fact, I thought I finished the walk. I had 30 days. I probably had 60 ish thousand words, 70,000 words I’d written during the. The popup. And then I thought in September, okay, I’m gonna in 21 days edit this down to a book and be done. And I started a diary newsletter called Nightingale and Gae, which some of you may be subscribed to.

And it was 21 issues was the goal. And I just sent out like 299 or something, issue 299. So I did not know where this was going. And yeah, the plan wasn’t for this to become a book. But that said, of all the other popups I’ve done as well, I would like to take the time to. Book afi. They all, to me, are the drafts of books.

So if I can ever shut up and go home and sit in one place to get ’em done maybe they will become books. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for following along.

Audience: You touched on this just a second ago, but what would you tell Japanese people to like, observe more about their own country, but also what would you tell visitors to really open their eyes to, to better?

Understand and appreciate,

Craig Mod: For visitors, so the question was like, what would I tell Japanese people to be maybe more aware of? I, so that, I think just what I’ve been doing in the interviews, honestly, it’s just this social infrastructure that allows these certain things that we love about Japan.

So the bizarre jazz quia that has been going for 50 years in this strange spot in this corner of Tokyo. That’s enabled by a bunch of social infrastructure zoning. I think Immersion Tokyo is a great book about how Tokyo has been zoned and why Tokyo looks the way it looks and functions the way it functions.

And I think a lot of the zoning has allowed for a lot of housing options. Part of why I spent my twenties in Tokyo, why I didn’t why, to me it felt like the place to stay and nurture my creative impulse was, it was so cheap to live there. It was so cheap. And talking on Bob, I was paying 500 bucks.

Yeah. How much were you paying for your share house?

Dexter Thomas: Oh not much, but then again, we were literally like, Tetris sleeping, so that doesn’t matter. But what but I had a place that was, about this, I was paying probably, for a 400 square foot, ah, 300 square foot maybe 600, 700, something like that.

It wasn’t expensive. Yeah. Yeah. If that,

Craig Mod: so you can easily live under a thousand dollars a month. My, my budget was a thousand bucks a month for all of my twenties. So if I hit a thousand dollars, I could pay my rent. I could eat. Good food. I could go out, I could live richly, which was impossible to do in San Francisco or New York.

That’s what it felt like to me. And I could live right in the middle of the city. And so I think that in Japan, it’s weird. I really feel like there should be this almost, Paris in the twenties sort of thing happening with artists in creative people in Tokyo because it is so inexpensive and you can be in the thick of it and you can be inspired by.

The infrastructure in the life of a city and the energy of a city without having to pay these kind of premiums. So just being aware of those kind of incredible gifts that I felt mainly ‘cause my, my point of view is so skewed from, compared to where I came from, just trying to make people be aware of that and not more and more.

The big change you’ve seen in the last decade architecturally is that they’re Tua man now, right? So they’re these big, extremely tall, not. Affordable housing apartments. They’re called Ma Mansion in Japanese, and they are just, it’s the first real sign of extreme wealth that Tokyo’s, I think has had, in the early two thousands, mid 2000

Dexter Thomas: maybe stratification.

Yeah. Strat maybe would be Strat stratification. Yeah. Because people have been rich before.

Craig Mod: People have been rich, but you’ve never, it’s never been on display like the tower mansions are now. So it’s you see these apartments and that’s $6 million, that’s, $7 million, something like that, which you didn’t, it was all a little bit more hidden and it wasn’t so ostentatious.

Anyway that’s bizarre. So seeing Maori and I always talk shit about Moy and like they’re never gonna work with me. But seeing Moy rip the city apart and replace it with these malls and these basically like. Mega developments has been pretty heartbreaking. So just seeing what we’re losing in that and then recognizing all these other areas that still have the original kind of eddo style, energy I think is important.

And then for visitors to go, honestly, if you’ve, if it’s your first time, you’re not gonna, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to parse anything. I, it’s impossible. Maybe Dex has a good bit of advice for a first time visitor, but like I just say, do whatever you’re gonna do. Go wherever you’re gonna go.

‘cause if I send you to a jazz kiss in moca, I don’t think you’re gonna. Really understand necessarily the difference between walking around Guillaume to a certain degree?

Dexter Thomas: Yeah, I would say honestly I, for both, honestly, for people who live for Japanese people and for visitors, I would say embrace the diversity, honestly.

‘cause to Tokyo especially is super diverse. Go to the Indian restaurant and figure out why they all like all certain. Sorts of Indian restaurants. First off, nobody there is Indian. They’re often somebody else, somewhere else. Also, they put out the same kind of food unless you go like a slightly higher tier of Indian food and then it’s like better, but it’s, yeah, like Japanese Indian food is extremely interesting.

Japanese Turkish food also is extremely interesting. Just, the taste and whatnot, but. I wrote about I was really interested in Japanese hip hop. That’s what I was working on when I got there. And it’s just changed because a lot of the younger generation is mixed and.

That is something that Japan is still figuring out. And I would say if you want to under, again, I would say, for people who live in Japan yo, you’re getting more diverse. This is an interesting, good thing. Embrace it. You were already in the past, it’s getting more diverse.

Let’s lean into that. But then for, visitors, I would say don’t, if you want the authentic Japanese experience, that’s gonna be like. The Iranian dude on the corner, sell, you’re just like hanging out or whatever. That’s part of it. You know what I mean? That’s part of it that, the Chinese family that is, just moved in next door.

That’s part of the authentic Japanese experience now, truly, especially in large city. So I would say, yeah, lean, lean into that. ‘cause that’s authentic right now, really. And it’s a future.

Craig Mod: Good answer. Good answer. Something like, statistically, it’s like 30, 40% of all kids born in Shibuya, Kuna are mixed.

It’s like a really. Really high percentage. Yeah. And it’s, Japan’s gonna have to, it’s

Dexter Thomas: changing the cultural landscape. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. If you want to quote unquote understand Japan go see that. Go see that.

Craig Mod: Yeah. Convenient. The rest of

Dexter Thomas: the stuff you can see on tv,

Craig Mod: convenience stores too.

Now it’s in Tokyo. When’s the last time you were in Tokyo? Pre COVID or

Dexter Thomas: yeah, pre COVID man. Yeah. So even since

Craig Mod: then, the number of Nepalese working at convenience stores, it’s gone from zero, six years ago to, I would say 50%. In Central Tokyo.

Dexter Thomas: Oh yeah.

Craig Mod: I mean it’s, it was already

Dexter Thomas: high.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah.

Craig Mod: It’s going up and in the middle of my big walks, walking from Kyoto to Tokyo.

The reason why I like walking the knot. Scrubbed bits. So a lot of people say, I walked the nendo, walked sgo to Mame. This little bit of perfectly scrubbed, bit of nendo. I like to walk all the other bits the less scrubbed the sort of just the more real. And I’ll be walking in the middle of nowhere and I each can, and a dude, an Epleys guy on a bicycle will bike past me and then it’ll turn around and be like, what are you doing?

And I’ll be like, what are you doing? And he’s I work at the Bento shop down the road, and to just see. A random 22-year-old Nepalese guy and all his only questions for me was, how many girlfriends do you have and how do I have more girlfriends? That’s all he wanted to know is girlfriends.

Oh God. He wanted so many girlfriends. But if you don’t do the walks and you don’t go to these kind of interstitial spaces, you’re not gonna see that. And that is, as Dexter said, that’s part of Japan today.

Dexter Thomas: Yeah. If you spend enough time, you end up having conversations with Russian people in Japanese ‘cause.

They don’t speak English and you don’t speak Russian. And

Speaker 3: yeah,

Dexter Thomas: you gotta get through it. We don’t speak English. They speak, ‘cause they live there. You know what I mean? And anybody? Any, anybody? Yeah. So yeah. One more, one more quick question. Keep going. Yeah. We can

Speaker 3: do a quick

Audience: one, but does, technically the store closes at eight.

Dexter Thomas: Okay. Okay. Yeah, we have time to, everybody get in there

Craig Mod: and talk to you and sign it. Okay. So if we do a quick question. One super quick question. Get in there. You got a self, you gotta self identify as quick.

Audience: What does, why is it special to you? Why is these are

Craig Mod: good special? Why is, which one?

Speaker 3: Goonies are good enough.

Craig Mod: Oh, Goonies are good enough.

Speaker 3: Oh,

Craig Mod: Yeah. I probably should have done like a standby me. So the, my members only section, the password for in the login was Goonies, was the login and the password are good enough to my members only section for years. And everyone just had that. It wasn’t, no one had an individual login.

I just, that movie, I don’t think I’ve watched a movie more than Goonies. That Goonies and Stand By Me. Goonies, I didn’t really understand because socioeconomically that whole, like part of Oregon was like way above where we were. But Stand By Me felt very much oh, it’s like I know all these kids, these, in fact, these kids are us.

And the outcome of Stand By Me was very similar to the outcome of Brian. But just in that wheelhouse of these two movies that you just watched over and over again as a kid and just thinking about, the world out beyond. And yeah, just important space.

Audience: One word.

What’s the secret to living an interesting life like in this?

Craig Mod: Just full days. Full days. That’s it. All right, everyone. Thank you. Thanks.