Ridgeline subscribers —

I started the year by walking across a big chunk of Tokyo today. Ten kilometers. Not super far, but far enough to get you from almost any point to any other point within the Yamanote Line.

For my 25 years of living in and around this city, if I’m in Tokyo on the January 1, I try to walk it (or in the past: bike it). The streets are mostly empty. Few cars. The crowds are thinned. When there are crowds, they’re gathered around temples and shrines, controlled. Go one street behind — ippon ura — and you’ve got the whole city to yourself once again. The weather is almost preternaturally good on the first of January. Almost always sunny and temperate. It’s freaky, how consistent this January first weather can be. (Related: When folks ask me “When should I visit Tokyo?” I always say: December; this weather is the case for most of December and much of January.)

I walked through the backstreet of Akasaka and behind Yotsuya, and popped out next to Sophia University. I walked down to Kojimachi and then to Yon-ban-cho and San-ban-cho where in another life I used to rent a small desk in a shared office. I walked into Yasukuni Shrine to see the throngs and the yatai carts dishing out their yatai goods, remembering New Year’s Eve evenings long past, where I walked the same carts just past midnight, drunk, teetering on the edge of consciousness, sipping sake and amazake and plowing chocolate bananas into my face, then plowing my face into the ground soon after. As I walked past the giant torii I thought about the vandalism that happened in 2024 at the shrine, with folks writing “TOILET” in Chinese on the gates. (Meanwhile, at Meiji-Jingu, an American dad scratched his name into a gate and was promptly arrested.)

Down I went into Jimbocho, remembering an interview I had at a small publishing house twenty-four years ago where the guy told me I should live in Shimokitazaka (I was in a desperate hunt for a home) and I remember having never heard those words before. I never lived there, but I probably should have. I saw a plot of land that was once a beautiful old brick building, and today is a gleaming tower of nothing. I walked past all the shuttered bookshops and kissa, I walked past the sports shops and up into Ochanomizu, over the bridge, down towards Kanda, past a passive gaggle of people looking to get their hatsumode on. I studiously skipped touching Akihabara, that place of shuddering hell, and stuck to more ippon-uras all the way up to the backside of Ueno. Through the park. Past the homeless talking to themselves. Past the homeless sneaking in furtive cigarettes on benches. Past the families strolling in that post-osechi-ryouri haze, brains full of a night of binging on kohaku performances.

Through the backstreets I continued to wind, in the general direction of Yanaka. I passed any number of simple homes, affordable homes. Lives can be built here for not much capital. Donald Richie, that complicated weirdo, once haunted these very roads. I saw a still-functioning hand-pump in the middle of a backstreet intersection. It was polished and gleaming and that made me pretty happy.

Finally, I popped out onto the hill leading up from Nezu to Yanaka, saw my destination on the horizon: Denny’s. I’ve been eating at this dumb Denny’s for decades on New Year’s Day, when I can, when I’m in town.

Now, in real-time, I’m sitting in the heart of the restaurant, writing these words, having eaten some noodles and eggplant and french fries and a “green salad,” having drunk my fill at the drink bar, surrounded by local families (all families, I’m the only solo dingdong). The group before me was eleven people. It’s bustling and there is life here in this goofy place. A daughter crawls over her dad. Over the years the food has gotten worse. The food gets worse and people forget how good it used to be. Or maybe they misremember. Maybe I’m misremembering. Still, facts: They’ve taken more and more of the Japanese menu off the “Grand Menu.” It’s all steak these days. Where’s my nice grilled fish gone to? Where’s my natto?¹

But — I came here not for Michelin inspirations, rather mainly as a way to measure distance traveled. I’ve sat here many years on this very day, perhaps in this very seat. I’ve felt tremendously alone in those days. And yes, I’m alone here now, but not alone. At least not like how I used to be. 2024 was a year of unbelievable fullness. I felt tremendous love in 2024 and got some of the best hugs of my life in 2024. I was blessed to walk with some truly inspiring idiots — idiots who shoved banana leaves into their shirt and strutted around like a Velociraptor making village women cry in fright and then delight. And now I’m bracing myself for the work that 2025 will require. So much. If you see me: Gimme a hug, I’ll likely be needing it. The focus for the first six months being the Random House edition of Things Become Other Things. It’s going to take a mountain range of effort to launch this thing. But I’m proud of the book and excited to get it into the world and into your hands, and in that sense feel like I have a mountain range of effort to give to it.

Anyway, a long time ago I sat in a seat in this place and thought about how I wanted to be writing books and was failing to do so. Didn’t see how it could be done. Felt crushed by that aloneness. On days like those, there was a violence to my walk across the city. A truculence. Today, just a walk — camera in hand, looking for good light, knowing we can do the work when the work needs to be done, because of the evidence of the corpus of having done. It’s nice to sit here having written books, having given all those talks I’ve given this year, of having done a monthly live radio show talking about the topics of these books. All of that: a proxy of connection. It’s nice to feel meaningful and affecting connections being made. It’s nice to have a Japanese edition of a book out, finally. And I hope in this year to do many events with Imai-san and Hayasaka-san. There are so many more discussions to be had, and so many more books to be written.

Hope you’re all doing well. Happy new year etc etc etc. Twenty-freggin’-twenty-five.

C